LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No. 

Shell.j.iAj? 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




1 

/ 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

[The Drawings by F. O. C. Darley.] 

Page 
If you know your Toad, it is all right. Frontispiece 
The Poles had come up beautifully . . 24 / 

Let us respect the Cat 60 S 

He burst into Tears 74 y 

i tried the scare-crow plan .... 89 

The Toads came out of their Holes . . . 115 
i told the man that i could not have the cow 

in the Grounds t .119 

Looking for a lost Hen 123 

Polly unfolds a small Scheme of Benevolence . 130 

What nice Ones ! 154 

He said he was only eating some . . . .159 
Polly says it is a perfect Match . . . . 175 



1 







M IJ you know your toad, it is all right" — Page 



39 



MY SUMMER IN A 
GARDEN 



BV 

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY 
F. O. C. DARLEY 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

€foe iftroewttie $1*00, CamfanDoe 

1898 



f 



18629 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, 

BY FIELDS, OSGOOD & CO., 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 

Copyright, 1898, 
By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 

All rig/its reserved. 




The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. 




INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 




>Y DEAR MR. FIELDS, — I did 
promise to write an Introduction 
to these charming papers ; but an 
Introduction, — what is it ? — a sort of pilaster, 
put upon the face of a building for looks* sake> 
and usually flat, — very flat. Sometimes it may 
be called a caryatid, which is, as I understand 
it, a cruel device of architecture, representing a 
man or a woman, obliged to hold up upon his 
or her head or shoulders a structure which 
they did not build, and which could stand just 
as well without as with them. But an Intro- 
duction is more apt to be a pillar, such as one 



2 INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 

may see in Baalbec, standing up in the air all 
alone, with nothing on it, and with nothing for 
it to do. 

But an Introductory Letter is different. There 
is in that no formality, no assumption of func- 
tion, no awkward propriety or dignity to be 
sustained. A letter at the opening of a book 
may be only a footpath, leading the curious to a 
favorable point of observation, and then leaving ' 
them to wander as they will. 

Sluggards have been sent to the ant for wis- 
dom ; but writers might better be sent to the 
spider, — not because he works all night, and 
watches all day, but because he works uncon- 
sciously. He dare not even bring his work 
before his own eyes, but keeps it behind him, 
as if too much knowledge of what one is doing 
would spoil the delicacy and modesty of one's 
work. 

Almost all graceful and fanciful work is born 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 3 

like a dream, that comes noiselessly, and tarries 
silently, and goes as a bubble bursts. And yet 
somewhere work must come in, — real, well- 
considered work. 

Inness (the best American painter of Nature 
in her moods of real human feeling) once said, 
" No man can do anything in art, unless he has 
intuitions ; but, between whiles, one must work 
hard in collecting the materials out of which 
intuitions are made." The truth could not be 
hit off better. Knowledge is the soil, and intui- 
tions are the flowers which grow up out of it. 
The soil must be well enriched and worked. 

It is very plain, or will be to those who read 
these papers, now gathered up into this book, as 
into a chariot for a race, that the author has 
long employed his eyes, his ears, and his under- 
standing, in observing and considering the facts 
of Nature, and in weaving curious analogies. 
Being an editor of one of the oldest daily news- 



4 INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 

papers in New England, and obliged to fill its 
columns day after day (as the village mill is 
obliged to render every day so many sacks of flour 
or of meal to its hungry customers), it naturally 
occurred to him, " Why not write something 
which I myself, as well as my readers, shall 
enjoy ? The market gives them facts enough ; 
politics, lies enough ; art, affectations enough ; 
criminal news, horrors enough ; fashion, more 
than enough of vanity upon vanity, and vexation 
of purse. Why should they not have some of 
those wandering and joyous fancies which solace 
my hours ? " 

The suggestion ripened into execution. Men 
and women read, and wanted more. These gar- 
den letters began to blossom every week ; and 
many hands were glad to gather pleasure from 
them. A sign it was of wisdom. In our feverish 
days it is a sign of health or of convalescence 
that men love gentle pleasure, and enjoyments 



INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 5 

that do not rush or roar, but distil as the 
dew. 

The love of rural life, the habit of finding 
joyment in familiar things, that susceptibility 
to Nature which keeps the nerve gently thrilled 
in her homeliest nooks and by her commonest 
sounds, is worth a thousand fortunes of money, 
or its equivalents. 

Every book which interprets the secret lore of 
fields and gardens, every essay that brings men 
nearer to the understanding of the mysteries 
which every tree whispers, every brook murmurs, 
every weed, even, hints, is a contribution to the 
wealth and the happiness of our kind. And if 
the lines of the writer shall be traced in quaint 
characters, and be filled with a grave humor, or 
break out at times into merriment, all this will 
be no presumption against their wisdom or his 
goodness. Is the oak less strong and tough be- 
cause the mosses and weather-stains stick in all 



6 INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 

manner of grotesque sketches along its bark? 
Now, truly, one may not learn from this little 
book either divinity or horticulture ; but if he 
gets a pure happiness, and a tendency to repeat 
the happiness from the simple stores of Nature, 
he will gain from our friend's garden what Adam 
lost in his, and what neither philosophy nor 
divinity has always been able to restore. 

Wherefore, thanking you for listening to a 
former letter, which begged you to consider 
whether these curious and ingenious papers, 
that go winding about like a half-trodden path 
between the garden and the field, might not be 
given in book-form to your million readers, I 
remain, yours to command in everything but 
the writing of an Introduction, 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. 




BY WAY OF DEDICATION. 




'Y DEAR POLLY,— When a few 
of these papers had appeared in 
" The Courant," I was encouraged 
to continue them by hearing that they had 
at least one reader who read them with the 
serious mind from which alone profit is to be 
expected. It was a maiden lady, who, I am 
sure, was no more to blame for her singleness 
than for her age ; and she looked to these hon- 
est sketches of experience for that aid which 
the professional agricultural papers could not 
give in the management of the little bit of gar- 
den which she called her own. She may have 
been my only disciple ; and I confess that the 



8 BY WAY OF DEDICATION. 

thought of her yielding a simple faith to what a 
gainsaying world may have regarded with levity 
has contributed much to give an increased prac- 
tical turn to my reports of what I know about 
gardening. The thought that I had misled a 
lady, whose age is not her only singularity, who 
looked to me for advice which should be not at 
all the fanciful product of the Garden of Gull, 
would give me great pain. I trust that her 
autumn is a peaceful one, and undisturbed by 
either the humorous or the satirical side of 
Nature. 

You know that this attempt to tell the truth 
about one of the most fascinating occupations in 
the world has not been without its dangers. I 
have received anonymous letters. Some of them 
were murderously spelled ; others were missives 
in such elegant phrase and dress, that danger 
was only to be apprehended in them by one 
skilled in the mysteries of mediaeval poisoning, 



BY WAY OF DEDICATION. 9 

when death flew on the wings of a perfume. 
One lady, whose entreaty that I should pause 
had something of command in it, wrote that my 
strictures on " pusley " had so inflamed her hus- 
band's zeal, that, in her absence in the country, 
he had rooted up all her beds of portulaca (a sort 
of cousin of the fat weed), and utterly cast it out. 
It is, however, to be expected, that retributive 
justice would visit the innocent as well as the 
guilty of an offending family. This is only an- 
other proof of the wide sweep of moral forces. 
I suppose that it is as necessary in the vegetable 
world as it is elsewhere to avoid the appearance 
of evil. 

In offering you the fruit of my garden, which 
has been gathered from week to week, without 
much reference to the progress of the crops or 
the drought, I desire to acknowledge an influence 
which has lent half the charm to my labor. If 
I were in a court of justice, or injustice, under 



IO BY WAY OF DEDICATION. 

oath, I should not like to say, that, either in the 
wooing days of spring, or under the suns of the 
summer solstice, you had been, either with hoe, 
rake, or miniature spade, of the least use in the 
garden ; but your suggestions have been invalu- 
able, and, whenever used, have been paid for. 
Your horticultural inquiries have been of a 
nature to astonish the vegetable world, if it 
listened, and were a constant inspiration to re- 
search. There was almost nothing that you did 
not wish to know ; and this, added to what I 
wished to know, made a boundless field for dis- 
covery. What might have become of the gar- 
den, if your advice had been followed, a good 
Providence only knows ; but I never worked 
there without a consciousness that you might at 
any moment come down the walk, under the 
grape-arbor, bestowing glances of approval, that 
were none the worse for not being critical ; exer- 
cising a sort of superintendence that elevated 



BY WAY OF DEDICATION. II 

gardening into a fine art ; expressing a wondei 

that was as complimentary to me as it was to 

Nature ; bringing an atmosphere which made 

the garden a region of romance, the soil of 

which was set apart for fruits native to climes 

unseen. It was this bright presence that filled 

the garden, as it did the summer, with light, 

and now leaves upon it that tender play of 

color and bloom which is called among the Alps 

the after-glow. 

C. D. W. 

Nook Farm, Hartford, October, 1870. 




MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN, 





PRELIMINARY. 




)HE love of dirt is among the earliest 
of passions, as it is the latest. Mud- 
pies gratify one of our first and best 
instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure. 
Fondness for the ground comes back to a man 
after he has run the round of pleasure and busi- 
ness, eaten dirt, and sown wild-oats, drifted about 
the world, and taken the wind of all its moods. 
The love of digging in the ground (or of looking 
on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to 
come back to him as he is sure, at last, to go 
under the ground, and stay there. " To own a bit 
of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant 



l6 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

seeds, and watch their renewal of life, — this is 
the commonest delight of the race, the most sat- 
isfactory thing a man can do. When Cicero 
writes of the pleasures of old age, that of agri- 
culture is chief among them : " Venio nunc ad 
voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego incredibiliter 
delector: quce nee ulla impediuntur senectute, et 
mihi ad sapientis vitam proxime videntur acce- 
dere." (I am driven to Latin because New York 
editors have exhausted the English language in 
the praising of spring, and especially of the 
month of May.) 

Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that 
they may own a piece of it ; they measure their 
success in life by their ability to buy it. It is 
alike the passion of the parvenu and the pride of 
the aristocrat. Broad acres are a patent of no- 
bility ; and no man but feels more of a man in 
the world if he have a bit of ground that he can 
call his own. However small it is on the sur- 






PRELIMINARY. 1 7 

face, it is four thousand miles deep ; and that is a 
very handsome property. And there is a great 
pleasure in working in the soil, apart from the 
ownership of it. -The man who has planted a 
garden feels that he has done something for the 
good of the world. He belongs to the produ- 
cers. It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's 
toil, if it be nothing more than a head of let- 
tuce or an ear of corn, One cultivates a lawn 
even with great satisfaction ; for there is noth- 
ing more beautiful than grass and turf in our 
latitude. The tropics may have their delights ; 
but they have not turf: and the world with- 
out turf is a dreary desert. The original Gar- 
den of Eden could not have had such turf as 
one sees in England. The Teutonic races 
all love turf: they emigrate in the line of its 
growth. 

To dig in the mellow soil — to dig moderately, 
for all pleasure should be taken sparingly — is 



1 8 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

a great thing. One gets strength out of the 
ground as often as one really touches it with a 
hoe. Antaeus (this is a classical article) was no 
doubt an agriculturist ; and such a prize-fighter 
as Hercules could n't do anything with him till 
he got him to lay down his spade, and quit the 
soil. It is not simply beets and potatoes and 
corn and string-beans that one raises in his well- 
hoed garden : it is the average of human life. 
There is life in the ground ; it goes into the 
seeds ; and it also, when it is stirred up, goes 
into the man who stirs it. The hot sun on his 
back as he bends to his shovel and hoe, or con- 
templatively rakes the warm and fragrant loam, 
is better than much medicine. The buds are 
coming out on the bushes round about ; the 
blossoms of the fruit-trees begin to show ; the 
blood is running up the grape-vines in streams ; 
you can smell the wild-flowers on the near bank ; 
and the birds are flying and glancing and singing 



PRELIMINARY. 1 9 

everywhere.. To the open kitchen-door comes 
the busy housewife to shake a white something, 
and stands a moment to look, quite transfixed by 
the delightful sights and sounds. ' Hoeing in the 
garden on a bright, soft May day, when you are 
not obliged to, is nearly equal to the delight of 
going trouting./ 

Blessed be agriculture ! if one does not have 
too much of it. All literature is fragrant with it, 
in a gentlemanly way./ At the foot of the charm- 
ing olive-covered hills of Tivoli, Horace (not he 
of Chappaqua) had a sunny farm : it was in sight 
of Hadrian's villa, who did landscape-gardening 
on an extensive scale, and probably did not get 
half as much comfort out of it as Horace did 
from his more simply-tilled acres. We trust that 
Horace did a little hoeing and farming himself, 
and that his verse is not all fraudulent sentiment. 
In order to enjoy agriculture, you do not want 
too much of it, and you want to be poor enough 



20 



MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



to have a little inducement to work moderately 
yourself. Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the 
best anticipations. It is not much matter if 
things do not turn out well. 





WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GAR- 
DENING. 




FIRST WEEK. 

NDER this modest title, I purpose to 
write a series of papers, some of which 
will be like many papers of garden- 
seeds, with nothing vital in them, on the subject 
of gardening ; holding that no man has any right 
to keep valuable knowledge to himself, and hop- 
ing that those who come after me, except tax- 
gatherers and that sort of person, will find profit 
in the perusal of my experience. As my knowl- 
edge is constantly increasing, there is likely to 
be no end to these papers. They will pursue 
no orderly system of agriculture or horticul- 



22 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

ture, but range from topic to topic, according 
to the weather and the progress of the weeds, 
which may drive me from one corner of the 
garden to the other. 

The principal value of a private garden i^ not 
understood. It is not to give the possessor vege- 
tables and fruit (that can be better and cheaper 
done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him 
patience and philosophy, and the higher virtues, 
— hope deferred, and expectations blighted, lead- 
ing directly to resignation, and sometimes to 
alienation. The garden thus becomes a moral 
agent, a test of character, as it was in the begin- 
ning. I shall keep this central truth in mind in 
these articles. I mean to have a moral garden, 
if it is not a productive one, — one that shall 
teach, O my brothers ! O my sisters! the great 
lessons of life. 

The first pleasant thing about a garden in this 
latitude is, that you never know when to set it 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 2^ 

going. If you want anything to come to matu- 
rity early, you must start it in a hot-house. If 
you put it out early, the chances are all in favor 
of getting it nipped with frost ; for the thermom- 
eter will be 90 one day, and go below 3 2° the 
night of the day following. And, if you do not 
set out plants or sow seeds early, you fret con- 
tinually ; knowing that your vegetables will be 
late, and that, while Jones has early peas, you 
will be watching your slow-forming pods. This 
keeps you in a state of mind. When you have 
planted anything early, you are doubtful whether 
to desire to see it above ground, or not. If 
a hot day comes, you long to see the young 
plants ; but, when a cold north-wind brings frost, 
you tremble lest the seeds have burst their bands. 
Your spring is passed in anxious doubts and 
fears, which are usually realized ; and so a great 
moral discipline is worked out for you. 

Now, there is my corn, two or three inches 



24 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

high this 1 8th of May, and apparently having no 
fear of a frost. I was hoeing it this morning for 
the first time, — it is not well usually to hoe corn 
until about the i8th*of May, — when Polly came 
out to look at the Lima beans. She seemed to 
think the poles had come up beautifully. I 
thought they did look well : they are a fine 
set of poles, large and well grown, and stand 
straight. They were inexpensive too. The 
cheapness came about from my cutting them on 
another man's land, and he did not know it. I 
have not examined this transaction in the moral 
light of gardening ; but I know people in this 
country take great liberties at the polls. Polly 
noticed that the beans had not themselves come 
up in any proper sense, but that the dirt had got 
off from them, leaving them uncovered. She 
thought it would be well to sprinkle a slight 
layer of dirt over them ; and I, indulgently, con- 
sented. It occurred to me, when she had gone, 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 25 

that beans always come up that way, — wrong 
end first ; and that what they wanted was light, 
and not dirt. 

Observation. — Woman always did, from the 
first, make a muss in a garden. 

I inherited with my garden a large patch of 
raspberries. Splendid berry the raspberry, when 
the strawberry has gone. This patch has grown 
into such a defiant attitude, that you could not 
get within several feet of it. Its stalks were 
enormous in size, and cast out long, prickly arms 
in all directions ; but the bushes were pretty 
much all dead. I have walked into them a good 
deal with a pruning-knife ; but it is very much 
like fighting original sin. The variety is one 
that I can recommend. I think it is called 
Brinckley's Orange. It is exceedingly prolific, 
and has enormous stalks. The fruit is also said 
to be good ; but that does not matter so much, 
as the* plant does not often bear in this region. 



26 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

The stalks seem to be biennial institutions ; and 
as they get about their growth one year, ana 
bear the next year, and then die, and the winters 
here nearly always kill them, unless you take 
them into the house (which is inconvenient if 
you have a family of small children), it is very 
difficult to induce the plant to flower and fruit. 
This is the greatest objection there is to this 
sort of raspberry. I think of keeping these for 
discipline, and setting out some others, more 
hardy sorts, for fruit. 








SECOND WEEK. 




*EXT to deciding when to start your 
garden, the most important matter is, 
what to put in it. It is difficult to 
decide what to order for dinner on a given day : 
how much more oppressive is it to order in a 
lump an endless vista of dinners, so to speak ! 
For, unless your garden is a boundless prairie 
(and mine seems to me to be that when I hoe it 
on hot days), you must make a selection, from 
the great variety of vegetables, of those you will 
raise in it ; and you feel rather bound to supply 
your own table from your own garden, and to eat 
only as you have sown. 

I hold that no man has a right (whatever his 



28 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

sex, of course) to have a garden to his own self- 
ish uses. He ought not to please himself, but 
every man to please his neighbor. I tried to 
have a garden that would give general moral 
satisfaction. It seemed to me that nobody could 
object to potatoes (a most useful vegetable) ; and 
I began to plant them freely. But there was 
a chorus of protest against them. " You don't 
want to take up your ground with potatoes/' the 
neighbors said : " you can buy potatoes " (the 
very thing I wanted to avoid doing is buying 
things). " What you want is the perishable 
things that you cannot get fresh in the market/' 
— " But what kind of perishable things ? " A 
horticulturist of eminence wanted me to sow 
lines of strawberries and raspberries right over 
where I had put my potatoes in drills. I had 
about five hundred strawberry-plants in another 
part of my garden ; but this fruit-fanatic wanted 
me to turn my whole patch into vines and run- 



WHAT 1 KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 29 

ners. I suppose I could raise strawberries 
enough for all my neighbors ; and perhaps I 
ought to do it. I had a little space prepared 
for melons, — musk-melons, — which I showed 
to an experienced friend. " You are not going 
to waste your ground on musk-melons ? " he 
asked. " They rarely ripen in this climate thor- 
oughly, before frost." He had tried for years 
without luck. I resolved to not go into such a 
foolish experiment. But, the next day, another 
neighbor happened in. " Ah ! I see you are 
going to have melons. My family would rather 
give up anything else in the garden than musk- 
melons, — of the nutmeg variety. They are the 
most grateful things we have on the table." So 
there it was. There was no compromise : it was 
melons, or no melons, and somebody offended in 
any case. I half resolved to plant them a little 
late, so that they would, and they would n't. But 
I had the same difficulty about string-beans 



30 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

which I detest), and squash (which I tolerate), 
and parsnips, and the whole round of green 
things. 

I have pretty much come to the conclusion 
that you have got to put your foot down in gar- 
dening. If I had actually taken counsel of my 
friends, I should not have had a thing growing 
in the garden to-day but weeds. And besides, 
while you are waiting, Nature does not wait. 
Her mind is made up. She knows just what 
she will raise ; and she has an infinite variety of 
early and late. The most humiliating thing to 
me about a garden is the lesson it teaches of the 
inferiority of man. Nature is prompt, decided, 
inexhaustible. She thrusts up Ler plants with a 
vigor and freedom that I admire ; and the more 
worthless the plant, the more rapid and splendid 
its growth. She is at it early and late, and all 
night ; never tiring, nor showing the least sign 
of exhaustion. 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 3 1 

* Eternal gardening is the price of liberty," is 
a motto that I should put over the gateway of 
my garden, if I had a gate. And yet it is not 
wholly true ; for there is no liberty in gardening. 
The man who undertakes a garden is relentlessly 
pursued. He felicitates himself that, when he 
gets it once planted, he will have a season of rest 
and of enjoyment in the sprouting and growing 
of his seeds. It is a green anticipation. He 
has planted a seed that will keep him awake 
nights ; drive rest from his bones, and sleep 
from his pillow. Hardly is the garden planted, 
when he must begin to hoe it. The weeds 
have sprung up all over it in a night. They 
shine and wave in redundant life. The docks 
have almost gone to seed ; and their roots go 
deeper than conscience. Talk about the Lon- 
don Docks ! — the roots of these are like the 
sources of the Aryan race. And the weeds are 
not all. I awake in the morning (and a thriving 



32 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

garden will wake a person up two hours before 
he ought to be out of bed) and think of the 
tomato-plants, — the leaves like fine lace-work, 
owing to black bugs that skip around, and can't 
be caught. Somebody ought to get up before 
the dew is off, (why don't the dew stay on till 
after a reasonable breakfast ?) and sprinkle soot 
on the leaves. I wonder if it is I. Soot is so 
much blacker than the bugs, that they are dis- 
gusted, and go away. You can't get up too 
early, if you have a garden. You must be early 
due yourself, if you get ahead of the bugs. I 
think, that, on the whole, it would be best to sit 
up all night, and sleep daytimes. Things ap- 
pear to go on in the night in the garden uncom- 
monly. It would be less trouble to stay up than 
it is to get up so early. 

I have been setting out some new raspberries, 
two sorts, — a silver and a gold color. How fine 
they will look on the table next year in a cut- 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 33 

glass dish, the cream being in a ditto pitcher ! I 
set them four and five feet apart. I set my 
strawberries pretty well apart also. The reason 
is, to give room for the cows to run through 
when they break into the garden, — as they do 
sometimes. A cow needs a broader track than 
a locomotive ; and she generally makes one. I 
am sometimes astonished to see how big a space 
in a flower-bed her foot will cover. The rasp- 
berries are called Doolittle and Golden Cap. I 
don't like the name of the first variety, and, if 
they do much, shall change it to Silver Top. 
You never can tell what a thing named Doolittle 
will do. The one in the Senate changed color, 
and got sour. They ripen badly, — either mil- 
dew, or rot on the bush. They are apt to John- 
sonize, — rot on the stem. I shall watch the 
Doolittles. 





TH IRD WEEK, 




BELIEVE that I have found, if not 
original sin, at least vegetable total de< 
pravity in my garden ; and it was there 
before I went into it. It is the bunch, or joint, 
or snake-grass, — whatever it is called. As I do 
not know the names of all the weeds and plants, 
I have to do as Adam did in his garden, — n^me 
things as I find them. This grass has a slender, 
beautiful stalk : and when you cut it down, or 
pull up a long root of it, you fancy it is got rid 
of ; but in a day or two it will come up in the 
same spot in half a dozen vigorous blades. Cut- 
ting down and pulling up is what it thrives on 
Extermination rather helps it. If you follow a 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 35 

slender white root, it will be found to run under 
the ground until it meets another slender white 
root ; and you will soon unearth a network of 
them, with a knot somewhere, sending out dozens 
of sharp-pointed, healthy shoots, every joint pre- 
pared to be an independent life and plant The 
only way to deal with it is to take one part hoe 
and two parts fingers, and carefully dig it out, 
not leaving a joint anywhere. It will take a 
little time, say all summer, to dig out thoroughly 
a small patch ; but if you once dig it out, and 
keep it out, you will have no further trouble. 

I have said it was total depravity. Here it is. 
If you attempt to pull up and root out any sin in 
you, which shows on the surface, — if it does not 
show, you do not care for it, — you may have 
noticed how it runs into an interior network of 
sins, and an ever-sprouting branch of them roots 
somewhere ; and that you cannot pull out one 
without making a general internal disturbance, 



36 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

and rooting up your whole being, I suppose it 
is less trouble to quietly cut them off at the top 
— say once a week, on Sunday, when you put on 
your religious clothes and face, — so that no one 
will see them, and not try to eradicate the net- 
work within. 

Remark. — This moral vegetable figure is at 
the service of any clergyman who will have the 
manliness to come forward and help me at a 
day's hoeing on my potatoes. None but the 
orthodox need apply. 

I, however, believe in the intellectual, if not 
the moral, qualities of vegetables, and especially 
weeds. There was a worthless vine that (or 
who) started up about midway between a grape- 
trellis and a row of bean-poles, some three feet 
from each, but a little nearer the trellis. When 
it came out of the ground, it looked around to 
see what it should do. The trellis was already 
occupied. The bean-pole was empty. There 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 2)7 

was evidently a little the best chance of light, 
air, and sole proprietorship on the pole. And 
the vine started for the pole, and began to climb 
it with determination. Here was as distinct an 
act of choice, of reason, as a boy exercises when 
he goes into a forest, and, looking about, decides 
which tree he will climb. And, besides, how did 
the vine know enough to travel in exactly the 
right direction, three feet, to find what it wanted? 
This is intellect. The weeds, on the other hand, 
have hateful moral qualities. To cut down a 
weed is, therefore, to do a moral action. I feel 
as if I were destroying sin. My hoe becomes an 
instrument of retributive justice. I am an apos- 
tle of Nature. This view of the matter lends a 
dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else 
does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoe- 
ing becomes, not a pastime, but a duty. And 
you get to regard it so, as the days and the 
weeds lengthen. 



38 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

Observation. — Nevertheless, what a man needs 
in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in 
it. The hoe is an ingenious instrument, cal- 
culated to call out a great deal of strength at a 
great disadvantage. 

The striped bug has come, the saddest of the 
year. He is a moral double-ender, iron-clad at 
that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He bur- 
rows in the ground so that you cannot find him, 
and he flies away so that you cannot catch him. 
He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but utterly 
dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant 
close to the ground, and ruins it without any 
apparent advantage to himself. I find him on 
the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be a 
cholera-year, and we shall not want any), the 
squashes (small loss), and the melons (which 
never ripen). The best way to deal with the 
striped bug is to sit down by the hills, and pa- 
tiently watch for him. If you are spry, you can 



WHAT 1 KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 39 

annoy him. This, however, takes time. It takes 
all day and part of the night. For he flieth in 
darkness, and wasteth at noonday. If you get 
up before the dew is off the plants, — it goes off 
very early, — you can sprinkle soot on the plant 
(soot is my panacea : if I can get the disease of 
a plant reduced to the necessity of soot, I am 
all right) ; and soot is unpleasant to the bug. 
But the best thing to do is to set a toad to catch 
the bugs. The toad at once establishes the most 
intimate relations with the bug. It is a pleasure 
to see such unity among the lower animals. The 
difficulty is to make the toad stay and watch 
the hill. If you know your toad, it is all right. 
If you do not, you must build a tight fence round 
the plants, which the toad cannot jump over. 
This, however, introduces a new element. I find 
that I have a zoological garden on my hands. It 
is an unexpected result of my little enterprise, 
which never aspired to the completeness of the 
Paris " Jardin des Plantes." 




FOURTH WEEK. 




RTHODOXY is at a low ebb. Only 
two clergymen accepted my offer to 
come and help hoe my potatoes for 
the privilege of using my vegetable total-deprav- 
ity figure about the snake-grass, or quack-grass 
as some call it ; and those two did not bring 
hoes. There seems to be a lack of disposition to 
hoe among our educated clergy. I am bound to 
say that these two, however, sat and watched my 
vigorous combats with the weeds, and talked 
most beautifully about the application of the 
snake-grass figure. As, for instance, when a 
fault or sin showed on the surface of a man, 
whether, if you dug down, you would find that it 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 4I 

ran back and into the original organic bunch of 
original sin within the man. The only other 
clergyman who came was from out of town, — a 
half Universalist, who said he would n't give 
twenty cents for my figure. He said that the 
snake-grass was not in my garden originally, that 
it sneaked in under the sod, and that it could be 
entirely rooted out with industry and patience. 
I asked the Universalist-inclined man to take 
my hoe and try it ; but he said he had n't time, 
and went away. 

But, jubilate, I have got my garden all hoed 
the first time ! I feel as if I had put down the 
rebellion. Only there are guerillas left here and 
there, about the borders and in corners, unsub- 
dued, — Forrest docks, and Quantrell grass, and 
Beauregard pig-weeds. This first hoeing is a 
gigantic task : it is your first trial of strength 
with the never-sleeping forces of Nature. - Sev- 
eral times, in its progress, I was tempted to do 



42 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

as Adam did, who abandoned his garden on ac- 
count of the weeds. (How much my mind 
seems to run upon Adam, as if there had been 
only two really moral gardens, — Adam's and 
mine !) The only drawback to my rejoicing 
over the finishing of the first hoeing is, that the 
garden now wants hoeing the second time. I 
suppose, if my garden were planted in a perfect 
circle, and I started round it with a hoe, I should 
never see an opportunity to rest. The fact is, 
that gardening is the old fable of perpetual 
labor ; and I, for one, can never forgive Adam 
Sisyphus, or whoever it was, who let in the roots 
of discord. I had pictured myself sitting at eve, 
with my family, in the shade of twilight, contem- 
plating a garden hoed. Alas ! it is a dream not 
to be realized in this world. 

My mind has been turned to the subject of 
fruit and shade trees in a garden. There are 
those who say that trees shade the garden too 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 43 

much, and interfere with the growth of the 
vegetables. There may be something in this: 
but when I go down the potato rows, the rays 
of the sun glancing upon my shining blade, the 
sweat pouring from my face, I should be grateful 
for shade. Whar is a garden for ? The pleasure 
of man. I should take much more pleasure in a 
shady garden. Am I to be sacrificed, broiled, 
roasted, for the sake of the increased vigor of a 
few vegetables ? The thing is perfectly absurd. 
If I were rich, I think I would have my garden 
covered with an awning, so that it would be com- 
fortable to work in it. It might roll up and be 
removable, as the great awning of the Roman 
Coliseum was, — not like the Boston one, which 
went off in a high wind. Another very good 
way to do, and probably not so expensive as the 
awning, would be to have four persons of foreign 
birth carry a sort of canopy over you as you 
hoed. And there might be a person at each end 



44 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

of the row with some cool and refreshing drink. 
Agriculture is still in a very barbarous stage. I 
hope to live yet to see the day when I can do 
my gardening, as tragedy is done, to slow and 
soothing music, and attended by some of the 
comforts I have named. These things come so 
forcibly into my mind sometimes as I work, that 
perhaps, when a wandering breeze lifts my straw 
hat, or a bird lights on a near currant-bush, and 
shakes out a full-throated summer song, I almost 
expect to find the cooling drink and the hospit- 
able entertainment at the end of the row. But I 
never do. There is nothing to be done but to 
turn round, and hoe back to the other end. 

Speaking of those yellow squash-bugs, I think 
I disheartened them by covering the plants so 
deep with soot and wood-ashes that they could 
not find them ; and I am in doubt if I shall ever 
see the plants again. But I have heard of 
another defence against the bugs. Put a fine 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 45 

wire-screen over each hill, which will keep out 
the bugs and admit the rain. I should say that 
these screens would not cost much more than 
the melons you would be likely to get from the 
vines if you bought them ; but then think of the 
moral satisfaction of watching the bugs hovering 
over the screen, seeing, but unable to reach the 
tender plants within. That is worth paying for. 
I left my own garden yesterday, and went over 
to where Polly was getting the weeds out of one 
of her flower-beds. She was working away at 
the bed with a little hoe. Whether women 
ought to have the ballot or not (and I have 
a decided opinion on that point, which I should 
here plainly give, did I not fear that it would 
injure my agricultural influence), I am compelled 
to say that this was rather helpless hoeing. It 
was patient, conscientious, even pathetic hoeing ; 
but it was neither effective nor finished. When 
completed, the bed looked somewhat as if a hen 



46 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

had scratched it : there was that touching un- 
evenness about it. I think no one could look at it 
and not be affected. To be sure, Polly smoothed 
it off with a rake, and asked me if it was n't nice ; 
and I said it was. It was not a favorable time 
for me to explain the difference between putter- 
ing hoeing, and the broad, free sweep of the 
instrument, which kills the weeds, spares the 
plants, and loosens the soil without leaving it 
in holes and hills. But, after all, as life is con- 
stituted, I think more of Polly's honest and 
anxious care of her plants than of the most 
finished gardening in the world. 




FIFTH WEEK. 




LEFT my garden for a week, just at the 
close of the dry spell. A season of rain 
immediately set in, and when I returned 
the transformation was wonderful. In one week 
every vegetable had fairly jumped forward. The 
tomatoes which I left slender plants, eaten of 
bugs and debating whether they would go back- 
ward or forward, had become stout and lusty, 
with thick stems and dark leaves, and some of 
them had blossomed. The corn waved like that 
which grows so rank out of the French-English 
mixture at Waterloo. The squashes— I will not 
speak of the squashes. The most remarkable 
growth was the asparagus. There was not a 



48 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

spear above ground when I went away ; and now 
it had sprung up, and gone to seed, and there 
were stalks higher than my head. I am entirely 
aware of the value of words, and of moral obli- 
gations. When I say that the asparagus had 
grown six feet in seven days, I expect and wish 
to be believed. I am a little particular about 
the statement ; for, if there is any prize offered 
for asparagus at the next agricultural fair, I wish 
to compete, — speed to govern. What I claim is 
the fastest asparagus. As for eating purposes, I 
have seen better. A neighbor of mine, who 
looked in at the growth of the bed, said, " Well, 

he 'd be " : but I told him there was no use 

of affirming now ; he might keep his oath till I 
wanted it on the asparagus affidavit. In order 
to have this sort of asparagus, you want to ma- 
nure heavily in the early spring, fork it in, and 
top-dress (that sounds technical) with a thick 
layer of chloride of sodium : if you cannot get 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 49 

that, common salt will do, and the neighbors will 
never notice whether it is the orthodox Na. CI. 
58.5, or not. 

I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the 
weeds. They grow as if the devil was in them. 
I know a lady, a member of the church, and a 
very good sort of woman, considering the subject 
condition of that class, who says that the weeds 
work on her to that extent, that, in going through 
her garden, she has the greatest difficulty in 
keeping the ten commandments in anything like 
an unfractured condition. I asked her which 
one, but she said, all of them : one felt like 
breaking the whole lot. The sort of weed which 
I most hate (if I can be said to hate anything 
which grows in my own garden) is the "pusley," a 
fat, ground-clinging, spreading, greasy thing, and 
the most propagatious (it is not my fault if the 
word is not in the dictionary) plant I know. I 
saw a Chinaman, who came over with a returned 

3 D 



50 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

missionary, and pretended to be converted, boil 
a lot of it in a pot, stir in eggs, and mix and eat 
it with relish, — " Me likee he." It will be a 
good thing to keep the Chinamen on when they 
come to do our gardening. I only fear they will 
cultivate it at the expense of the strawberries 
and melons. Who can say that other weeds, 
which we despise, may not be the favorite food 
of some remote people or tribe ? We ought to 
abate our conceit. It is possible that we destroy 
in our gardens that which is really of most value 
in some other place. Perhaps, in like manner, 
our faults and vices are virtues in some remote 
planet. I cannot see, * however, that this thought 
is of the slightest value to us here, any more 
than weeds are. 

There is another subject which is forced upon 
my notice. I like neighbors, and I like chick- 
ens ; but I do not think they ought to be united 
near a garden. Neighbors' hens in your garden 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 5 1 

are an annoyance. Even if they did not scratch 
up the corn, and peck the strawberries, and eat 
the tomatoes, it is not pleasant to see them 
straddling about in their jerky, high-stepping, 
speculative manner, picking inquisitively here 
and there. It is of no use to tell the neighbor 
that his hens eat your tomatoes : it makes no 
impression on him, for the tomatoes are not his. 
The best way is to casually remark to him that 
he has a fine lot of chickens, pretty well grown, 
and that you like spring chickens broiled. He 
will take them away at once. 

The neighbors' small children are also out 
of place in your garden, in strawberry and 
currant time. I hope I appreciate the value 
of children. We should soon come to noth- 
ing without them, though the Shakers have 
the best gardens in the world. Without them 
the common school would languish. But the 
problem is, what to do with them in a gar- 



52 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

den. For they are not good to eat, and there 
is a law against making away with them. 
The law is not very well enforced, it is 
true ; for people do thin them out with con- 
stant dosing, paregoric, and soothing-syrups, and 
scanty clothing. But I, for one, feel that it 
would not be right, aside from the law, to take 
the life, even of the smallest child, for the sake 
of a little fruit, more .or less, in the garden. I 
may be wrong ; but these are my sentiments, 
and I am not ashamed of them. When we 
come, as Bryant says in his " Iliad/' to leave 
the circus of this life, and join that innumerable 
caravan which moves, it will be some satisfaction 
to us, that we have never, in the way of garden- 
ing, disposed of even the humblest child unneces- 
sarily. My plan would be to put them into Sun- 
day schools more thoroughly, and to give the 
Sunday schools an agricultural turn ; teaching 
the children the sacredness of neighbors' vege- 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 



53 



tables. I think that our Sunday schools do not 
sufficiently impress upon children the danger, 
from snakes and otherwise, of going into the 
neighbors' gardens. 





SIXTH WEEK 




OMEBODY has sent me a new sort 
of hoe, with the wish that I should 
speak favorably of it, if I can consist- 
ently. I willingly do so, but with the under- 
standing that I am to be at liberty to speak 
just as courteously of any other hoe which I 
may receive. If I understand religious morals, 
this is the position of the religious press with 
regard to bitters and wringing-machines. In 
some cases, the responsibility of such a recom- 
mendation is shifted upon the wife of the editor 
or clergyman. Polly says she is entirely willing 
to make a certificate, accompanied with an affi- 
davit, with regard to this hoe ; but her habit of 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 55 

sitting about the garden-walk, on an inverted 
flower-pot, while I hoe, somewhat destroys the 
practical value of her testimony. 

As to this hoe, I do not mind saying that it 
has changed my view of the desirableness and 
value of human life. It has, in fact, made life a 
holiday to me. It is made on the principle that 
man is an upright, sensible, reasonable being, 
and not a grovelling wretch. It does away with 
the necessity of the hinge in the back. The 
handle is seven and a half feet long. There are 
two narrow blades, sharp on both edges, which 
come together at an obtuse angle in front ; and 
as you walk along with this hoe before you, 
pushing and pulling with a gentle motion, the 
weeds fall at every thrust and withdrawal, and 
the slaughter is immediate and wide-spread. 
When I got this hoe I was troubled with sleep- 
less mornings, pains in the back, kleptomania 
with regard to new weeders ; when I went into 



$6 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

my garden I was always sure to see something. 
In this disordered state of mind and body I got 
this hoe. The morning after a day of using it I 
slept perfectly and late. I regained my respect 
for the eighth commandment. After two doses 
of the hoe in the garden, the weeds entirely dis- 
appeared. Trying it a third morning, I was 
obliged to throw it over the fence in order to 
save from destruction the green things that 
ought to grow in the garden. Of course, this is 
figurative language. What I mean is, that the 
fascination of using this hoe is such that you 
are sorely tempted to employ it upon your vege- 
tables, after the weeds are laid low, and must 
hastily withdraw it, to avoid unpleasant results. 
I make this explanation, because I intend to 
put nothing into these agricultural papers that 
will not bear the strictest scientific investiga- 
tion ; nothing that the youngest child cannot 
understand and cry for; nothing that the oldest 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 57 

and wisest men will not need to study with 
care. 

I need not add that the care of a garden with 
this hoe becomes the merest pastime. I would 
not be without one for a single night. The only 
danger is, that you may rather make an idol of 
the hoe, and somewhat neglect your garden in 
explaining it, and fooling about with it. I almost 
think that, with one of these in the hands of an 
ordinary day-laborer, you might see at night 
where he had been working. 

Let us have peas. I have been a zealous ad- 
vocate of the birds. I have rejoiced in their 
multiplication. I have endured their concerts 
at four o'clock in the morning without a mur- 
mur. Let them come, I said, and eat the worms, 
in order that we, later, may enjoy the foliage and 
the fruits of the earth. We have a cat, a magnifi- 
cent animal, of the sex which votes (but not a 
pole-cat), — so large and powerful that, if he 



58 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

were in the array, he would be called Long 
Tom. He is a cat of fine disposition, the most 
irreproachable morals I ever saw thrown away 
in a cat , and a splendid hunter. He spends his 
nights, not in social dissipation, but in gathering 
in rats, mice, flying-squirrels, and also birds. 
When he first brought me a bird, I told him 
that it was wrong, and tried to convince him, 
while he was eating it, that he was doing wrong ; 
for he is a reasonable cat, and understands pretty 
much everything except the binomial theorem 
and the time down the cycloidal arc. But with 
no effect. The killing of birds went on to my 
great regret and shame. 

The other day I went to my garden to get a 
mess of peas. I had seen, the day before, that 
they were just ready to pick. How I had lined 
the ground, planted, hoed, bushed them ! The 
bushes were very fine, — seven feet high, and of 
good wood. How I had delighted in the grow- 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 59 

ing, the blowing, the podding ! What a touch- 
ing thought it was that they had all podded for 
me! When I went to pick them, I found the 
pods all split open, and the peas gone. The dear 
little birds, who are so fond of the strawberries, 
had eaten them all. Perhaps there were left as 
many as I planted : I did not count them. I 
made a rapid estimate of the cost of the seed, 
the interest of the ground, the price of labor, 
the value of the bushes, the anxiety of weeks of 
watchfulness. I looked about me on the face of 
Nature. The wind blew from the south so soft 
and treacherous ! A thrush sang in the woods 
so deceitfully ! All Nature seemed fair. But 
who was to give me back my peas ? The fowls 
of the air have peas ; but what has man ? 

I went into the house. I called Calvin. (That 
is the name of our cat, given him on account 
of his gravity, morality, and uprightness. We 
never familiarly call him John.) I petted Cal- 



60 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

vin. I lavished upon him an enthusiastic fond- 
ness. I told him that he had no fault ; that the 
one action that I had called a vice was an heroic 
exhibition of regard for my interests. I bade 
him go and do likewise continually. I now saw 
how much better instinct is than mere unguided 
reason. Calvin knew. If he had put his opin- 
ion into English (instead of his native cat- 
alogue), it would have been: "You need not 
teach your grandmother to suck eggs." It was 
only the round of Nature. The worms eat a nox- 
ious something in the ground. The birds eat the 
worms. Calvin eats the birds. We eat — no, 
we do not eat Calvin. There the chain stops. 
When you ascend the scale of being, and come to 
an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible, you 
have arrived at a result where you can rest. Let 
us respect the cat. He completes an edible chain . 
I have little heart to discuss methods of raid- 
ing peas. It occurs to me that I can have an 



■ 




' Let us respect tJw cut." — Page <»o 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 6 1 

iron pea-bush, a sort of trellis, through which 
I could discharge electricity at frequent inter- 
vals, and electrify the birds to death when they 
alight : for they stand upon my beautiful brush 
in order to pick out the peas. An apparatus of 
this kind, with an operator, would cost, however, 
ftbout as much as the peas. A neighbor sug- 
gests that I might put up a scarecrow near the 
vines, which would keep the birds away. I am 
doubtful about it : the birds are too much accus- 
tomed to seeing a person in poor clothes in the 
garden to care much for that. Another neigh- 
bor suggests that the birds do not open the 
pods ; that a sort of blast, apt to come after 
rain, splits the pods, and the birds then eat the 
peas. It may be so. There seems to be com- 
plete unity of action between the blast and the 
birds. But, good neighbors, kind friends, I de- 
sire that you will not increase, by talk, a disap- 
pointment which you cannot assuage. 



SEVENTH WEEK 




GARDEN is an awful responsibility. 
You never know what you may be 
aiding to grow in it. I heard a ser- 
mon, not long ago, in which the preacher said 
that the Christian, at the moment of his becom- 
ing one, was as perfect a Christian as he would 
be if he grew to be an archangel ; that is, that 
he would not change thereafter at all, but only 
develop. I do not know whether this is good 
theology, or not ; and I hesitate to support it by 
an illustration from my garden, especially as I 
do not want to run the risk of propagating error, 
and I do not care to give away these theological 
comparisons to clergymen who make me so little 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 63 

return in the way of labor. But I find, in dis- 
secting a pea-blossom, that hidden in the centre 
of it is a perfect miniature pea-pod, with the 
peas all in it, — as perfect a pea-pod as it will 
ever be ; only it is as tiny as a chatelaine orna- 
ment. Maize and some other things show the 
same precocity. This confirmation of the the- 
ologic theory is startling, and sets me meditating 
upon the moral possibilities of my garden. I 
may find in it yet the cosmic egg. 

And, speaking of moral things, I am half 
determined to petition the (Ecumenical Council 
to issue a bull of excommunication against " pus- 
ley." Of all the forms which " error " has taken 
in this world, I think that is about the worst 
In the Middle Ages the monks in St. Bernard's 
ascetic community at Clairvaux excommunicated 
a vineyard which a less rigid monk had planted 
near, so that it bore nothing. In n 20 a bishop 
of Laon excommunicated the caterpillars in his 



64 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN, 

diocese ; and, the following year, St. Bernard 
excommunicated the flies in the Monastery of 
Foigny ; and in 15 10 the ecclesiastical court 
pronounced the dread sentence against the rats 
of Autun, Macon, and Lyons. These examples 
are sufficient precedents. It will be well for the 
council, however, not to publish the bull either 
just before or just after a rain; for nothing can 
kill this pestilent heresy when the ground is 
wet. 

It is the time of festivals. Polly says we 
ought to have one, — a strawberry-festival. She 
says they are perfectly delightful : it is so nice to 
get people together ! — this hot weather. They 
create such a good feeling ! I myself am very 
fond of festivals. I always go, — when I can 
consistently. Besides the strawberries, there are 
ice-creams and cake and lemonade, and that sort 
of thing : and one always feels so well the. next 
day after such a diet ! But as social reunions, 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 65 

if there are good things to eat, nothing can be 
pleasanter ; and they are very profitable, if you 
have a good object. I agreed that we ought to 
have a festival ; but I did not know what object 
to devote it to. We are not in need of an organ, 
nor of any pulpit-cushions. I do not know that 
they use pulpit-cushions now as much as they 
used to, when preachers had to have something 
30ft to pound, so that they would not hurt their 
fists. I suggested pocket-handkerchiefs, and 
flannels for next winter. But Polly says that 
will not do. at all. You must have some chari- 
table object, — something that appeals to a vast 
sense of something ; something that it will be 
right to get up lotteries and that sort of thing 
for. I suggest a festival lor the benefit of my 
garden ; and this seems feasible. In order to 
make everything pass off pleasantly, invited 
guests will bring or send their own strawberries 
and cream, which I shall be happy to sell to 



66 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

them at a slight advance. There are a great 
many improvements which the garden needs ; 
among them a sounding-board, so that the neigh- 
bors' children can hear when I tell them to get 
a little farther off from the currant-bushes. I 
should also like a selection from the ten com- 
mandments, in big letters, posted up conspicu- 
ously, and a few traps, that will detain, but not 
maim, for the benefit of those who cannot read. 
But what is most important is, that the ladies 
should crochet nets to cover over the straw- 
berries. A good-sized, well-managed festival 
ought to produce nets enough to cover my entire 
beds ; and I can think of no other method of 
preserving the berries from the birds next year. 
I wonder how many strawberries it would need 
for a festival, and whether they would cost more 
than the nets. 

I am more and more impressed, as the sum- 
mer goes on, with the inequality of man's fight 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 6j 

with Nature ; especially in a civilized state. In 
savagery, it does not so much matter ; for one 
does not take a square hold, and put out his 
strength, but rather accommodates himself to 
the situation, and takes what he can get, without 
raising any dust, or putting himself into ever- 
lasting opposition. But the minute he begins to 
clear a spot larger than he needs to sleep in for 
a night, and to try to have his own way in the 
least, Nature is at once up, and vigilant, and 
contests him at every step with all her ingenu- 
ity and unwearied vigor. This talk of subduing 
Nature is pretty much nonsense. I do not in- 
tend to surrender in the midst of the summer 
campaign, yet I cannot but think how much 
% more peaceful my relations would now be with 
the primal forces, if I had let Nature make the 
garden according to her own notion. (This is 
written with the thermometer at ninety degrees, 
and the weeds starting up with a freshness and 



68 



MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



vigor, as if they had just thought of it for the 
first time, and had not been cut down and 
dragged out every other day since the snow 
went off.) 

We have got down the forests, and extermi- 
nated savage beasts ; but Nature is no more sub- 
dued than before : she only changes her tactics, 
— uses smaller guns, so to speak. She re-en- 
forces herself with a variety of bugs, worms, and 
vermin, and weeds, unknown to the savage state, 
in order to make war upon the things of our 
planting ; and calls in the fowls of the air, just 
as we think the battle is won, to snatch away 
the booty. When one gets almost weary of the 
struggle, she is as fresh as at the beginning, — 
just, in fact, ready for the fray. I, for my part, 
begin to appreciate the value of frost and snow ; 
for they give the husbandman a little peace, and 
enable him, for a season, to contemplate his in- 
cessant foe subdued. I do not wonder that the 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 69 

tropical people, where Nature never goes to 
sleep, give it up, and sit in lazy acquiescence. 
Here I have been working all the season to 
make a piece of lawn. It had to be graded and 
sowed and rolled ; and I have been shaving it 
like a barber. When it was soft, everything had 
a tendency to go on to it, — cows, and especially 
wandering hackmen. Hackmen (who are a pro- 
duct of civilization) know a lawn when they see 
it. They rather have a fancy for it, and always 
try to drive so as to cut the sharp borders of it, 
and leave the marks of their wheels in deep ruts 
of cut-up, ruined turf. The other morning, I 
had just been running the mower over the lawn, 
and stood regarding its smoothness, when I no- 
ticed one, two, three puffs of fresh earth in it ; 
and, hastening thither, I found that the mole had 
arrived to complete the work of the hackmen. 
In a half-hour he had rooted up the ground like 
a pig. I found his run-ways. I waited for him 



yO MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

with a spade. He did not appear ; but, the next 
time I passed by, he had ridged the ground in 
all directions, — a smooth, beautiful animal, with 
fur like silk, if you could only catch him. He 
appears to enjoy the lawn as much as the hack- 
men did. He does not care how smooth it is. 
He is constantly mining, and ridging it up. I 
am not sure but he could be countermined. I 
have half a mind to put powder in here and 
there, and blow the whole thing into the air. 
Some folks set traps for the mole ; but my moles 
never seem to go twice in the same place. I am 
not sure but it would bother them to sow the 
lawn with interlacing snake-grass (the botanical 
name of which, somebody writes me, is devil- 
grass : the first time I have heard that the Devil 
has a botanical name), which would worry them, 
if it is as difficult for them to get through it as it 
is for me. 

I do not speak of this mole in any tone of 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 7 1 

complaint. He is only a part of the untiring 
resources which Nature brings against the hum- 
ble gardener. I desire to write nothing against 
him which I should wish to recall at the last, — 
nothing foreign to the spirit of that beautiful 
saying of the dying boy, " He had no copy-book, 
which, dying, he was sorry he had blotted." 





EIGHTH WEEK, 




Y garden has been visited by a High 
Official Person. President G — nt 
was here just before the Fourth, 
getting his mind quiet for that event by a few 
days of retirement, staying with a friend at the 
head of our street ; and I asked him if he would 
n't like to come down our way Sunday afternoon, 
and take a plain, simple look at my garden, eat 
a little lemon ice-cream and jelly-cake, and drink 
a glass of native lager°mer. I thought of put- 
ting up over my gate, " Welcome to the Nation's 
Gardener " ; but I hate nonsense, and did n't do 
it. I, however, hoed diligently on Saturday : 
what weeds I could n't remove I buried, so that 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING 73 

everything would look all right. The borders 
of my drive were trimmed with scissors ; and 
everything that could offend the Eye of the 
Great was hustled out of the way. 

In relating this interview, it must be distinctly 
understood that I am not responsible for any- 
thing that the President said ; nor is he, either. 
He is not a great speaker ; but whatever he says 
has an esoteric and an exoteric meaning ; and 
some of his remarks about my vegetables went 
very deep. I said nothing to him whatever 
about politics, at which he seemed a good deal 
surprised : he said it was the first garden he 
had ever been in, with a man, when the talk 
was not of appointments. I told him that this 
was purely vegetable ; after which he seemed 
more at his ease, and, in fact, delighted with 
everything he saw. He was much interested in 
my strawberry-beds, asked what varieties T had, 
and requested me to send him some seed. He 
4 



74 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

said the patent-office seed was as difficult to raise 
as an appropriation for the St. Domingo business. 
The playful bean seemed also to please him ; 
and he said he had never seen such impres- 
sive corn and potatoes at this time of year ; that 
it was to him an unexpected pleasure, and one 
of the choicest memories that he should take 
away with him of his visit to New England. 

N. B. — That corn and those potatoes which 
General Gr — nt looked at I will sell for seed, at 
five dollars an ear, and one dollar a potato. 
Office-seekers need not apply. 

Knowing the President's great desire for peas, 
I kept him from that part of the garden where 
the vines grow. But they could not be con- 
cealed. Those who say that the President is 
not a man easily moved are knaves or fools. 
When he saw my pea-pods, ravaged by the 
birds, he burst into tears. A man of war, he 
knows the value of peas. I told him they were 




11 IL' burst into tears." — Page 74. 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 75 

an excellent sort, " The Champion of England." 
As quick as a flash he said, — 

" Why don't you call them ' The Reverdy 
Johnson ' ? " 

It was a very clever bon-mot ; but I changed 
the subject. 

The sight of my squashes, with stalks as big 
as speaking-trumpets, restored the President to 
his usual spirits. He said the summer squash 
was the most ludicrous vegetable he knew. It 
was nearly all leaf and blow, with only a sickly, 
crook-necked fruit after a mighty fuss. It re- 
minded him of the member of Congress from 
• ; but I hastened to change the subject. 

As we walked along, the keen eye of the 
President rested upon some handsome sprays of 
" pusley," which must have grown up since Sat- 
urday night. It was most fortunate ; for it led 
his Excellency to speak of the Chinese problem. 
He said he had been struck with one coupling 



j6 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

of the Chinese and " pusley " in one of my agri- 
cultural papers ; and it had a significance more 
far-reaching than I had probably supposed. He 
had made the Chinese problem a special study. 
He said that I was right in saying that " pusley" 
was the natural food of the Chinaman, and that 
where the " pusley " was there would the China- 
man be also. For his part, he welcomed the 
Chinese emigration : we needed the Chinaman 
in our gardens to eat the " pusley " ; and he 
thought the whole problem solved by this simple 
consideration. To get rid of rats and " pusley/' 
he said, was a necessity of our civilization. He 
did not care so much about the shoe-business; 
he did not think that the little Chinese shoes 
that he had seen would be of service in the 
army : but the garden-interest was quite another 
affair. We want to make a garden of our whole 
country : the hoe, in the hands of a man truly 
great, he was pleased to say, was mightier than 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. ^J 

the pen. He presumed that General B — tl — r 
had never taken into consideration the garden- 
question, or he would not assume the position 
he does with regard to the Chinese emigration. 
He would let the Chinese come, even if B — tl — r 
had to leave, I thought he was going to say, but 
I changed the subject. 

During our entire garden interview (operati- 
cally speaking, the garden-scene), the President 
was not smoking. I do not know how the im- 
pression arose that he " uses tobacco in any 
form " ; for I have seen him several times, and 
he was not smoking. Indeed, I offered him a 
Connecticut six ; but he wittily said that he did 
not like a weed in a garden, — a remark which 
I took to have a personal political bearing, and 
changed the subject. 

The President was a good deal surprised at 
the method and fine appearance of my garden, 
and to learn that I had the sole care of it. 1 [e 



78 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

asked me if I pursued an original course, or 
whether I got my ideas from writers on the sub- 
ject. I told him that I had had no time to read 
anything on the subject since I began to hoe, 
except " Lothair," from which I got my ideas of 
landscape-gardening ; and that I had worked the 
garden entirely according to my own notions, 
except that I had borne in mind his injunction, 
" to fight it out on this line if — " The President 
stopped me abruptly, and said it was unneces- 
sary to repeat that remark : he thought he had 
heard it before. Indeed, he deeply regretted 
that he had ever made it. Sometimes, he said, 
after hearing it in speeches, and coming across 
it in resolutions, and reading it in newspapers, 
and having it dropped jocularly by facetious 
politicians, who were boring him for an office, 
about twenty-five times a day, say for a month, 
it would get to running through his head, like 
the " shoo-fly " song which B — tl — r sings in the 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 79 

House, until it did seem as if he should go dis- 
tracted. He said, no man could stand that kind 
of sentence hammering on his brain for years. 

The President was so much pleased with my 
management of the garden, that he offered me 
(at least, I so understood him) the position of 
head gardener at the White House, to have care 
of the exotics. I told him that I thanked him, 
but that I did not desire any foreign appoint- 
ment. I had resolved, when the administration 
came in, not to take an appointment ; and I 
had kept my resolution. As to any home office, 
I was poor, but honest ; and, of course, it would 
be useless for me to take one. The President 
mused a moment, and then smiled, and said he 
would see what could be done for me. I did 
not change the subject ; but nothing further was 
said by General Gr — nt. 

The President is a great talker (contrary to 
the general impression) ; but I think he appre- 



80 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

ciated his quiet hour in my garden. He said it 
carried him back to his youth 'farther than any- 
thing he had seen lately. He looked forward 
with delight to the time when he could again 
have his private garden, grow his own lettuce 
and tomatoes, and not have to get so much 
" sarce " from Congress. 

The chair in which the President sat, while 
declining to take a glass of lager, I have had 
destroyed, in order that no one may sit in it. 
It was the only way to save it, if I may so speak. 
It would have been impossible to keep it from 
use by any precautions. There are people who 
would have sat in it, if the seat had been set 
with iron spikes. Such is the adoration of 
Station. 





NINTH WEEK 




AM more and more impressed with the 
moral qualities of vegetables, and con- 
template forming a science which shall 
rank with comparative anatomy and compara- 
tive philology, — the science of comparative 
vegetable morality. We live in an age of pro- 
toplasm. And, if life-matter is essentially the 
same in all forms of life, I purpose to begin 
early, and ascertain the nature of the plants for 
which I am responsible. - I will not associate 
with any vegetable which is disreputable, or has 
not some quality that can contribute to my 
moral growth. I do not care to be scon much 
with the squashes or the dead-beets. Fortu- 

4* F 



82 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

nately I can cut down any sorts I do not like 
with the hoe, and, probably, commit no more 
sin in so doing than the Christians did in 
hewing down the Jews in the Middle Ages. 

This matter of vegetable rank has not been 
at all studied as it should be. Why do we 
respect some vegetables, and despise others, 
when all of them come to an equal honor or 
ignominy on the table ? The bean is a grace- 
ful, confiding, engaging vine ; but you never can 
put beans into poetry, nor into the highest sort 
of prose. There is no dignity in the bean. 
Corn, which, in my garden, grows alongside 
the bean, and, so far as I can see, with no 
affectation of superiority, is, however, the child 
of song. It waves in all literature. But mix 
it with beans, and its high tone is gone. Suc- 
cotash is vulgar. It is the bean in it. The 
bean is a vulgar vegetable, without culture, or 
any flavor of high society among vegetables. 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 83 

Then there is the cool cucumber, like so many 
people, — good for nothing when it is ripe and 
the wildness has gone out of it. How inferior 
in quality it is to the melon, which grows upon 
a similar vine, is of a like watery consistency, 
but is not half so valuable ! The cucumber is 
a sort of low comedian in a company where the 
melon is a minor gentleman. I might also con- 
trast the celery with the potato. The associa- 
tions are as opposite as the dining-room of the 
duchess and the cabin of the peasant. I admire 
the potato, both in vine and blossom ; but it is 
not aristocratic. I began digging my potatoes, 
by the way, about the 4th of July ; and I fancy 
I have discovered the right way to do it. I 
treat the potato just as I would a cow. I do 
not pull them up, and shake them out, and de- 
stroy them ; but I dig carefully at the side of 
the hill, remove the fruit which is grown, leaving 
the vine undisturbed : and my theory is, that it 



84 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

will go on bearing, and submitting to my exac- 
tions, until the frost cuts it down. It is a game 
that one would not undertake with a vegetable 
of tone. 

The lettuce is to me a most interesting study. 
Lettuce is like conversation : it must be fresh and 
crisp, so sparkling that you scarcely notice the 
bitter in it. Lettuce, like most talkers, is, how- 
ever, apt to run rapidly to seed. Blessed is that 
sort which comes to a head, and so remains, like 
a few people I know ; growing more solid and 
satisfactory and tender at the same time, and 
whiter at the centre, and crisp in their maturity. 
Lettuce, like conversation, requires a good deal 
of oil, to avoid friction, and keep the com- 
pany smooth ; a pinch of attic salt ; a dash of 
pepper ; a quantity of mustard and vinegar, by 
all means, but so mixed that you will notice no 
sharp contrasts ; and a trifle of sugar. You can 
put anything, and the more things the better, into 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 85 

salad, as into a conversation ; but everything 
depends upon the skill of mixing. I feel that I 
am in the best society when I am with lettuce. 
It is in the select circle of vegetables. The 
tomato appears well on the table ; but you do 
not want to ask its origin. It is a most agree- 
able parvenu. Of course, I have said nothing 
about the berries. They live in another and 
more ideal region ; except, perhaps, the currant. 
Here we see, that, even among berries, there are 
degrees of breeding. The currant is well enough, 
clear as truth, and exquisite in color ; but I ask 
you to notice how far it is from the exclusive 
hauteur of the aristocratic strawberry, and the 
native refinement of the quietly elegant raspberry. 
I do not know that chemistry, searching for 
protoplasm, is able to discover the tendency of 
vegetables. It can only be found out by outward 
observation. I confess that I am suspicious of 
the beau, for instance. There are signs in it 



36 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

of an unregulated life. I put up the most at* 
tractive sort of poles for my Limas. They 
stand high and straight, like church-spires, in 
my theological garden, — lifted up ; and some 
of them have even budded, like Aaron's rod. 
No church-steeple in a New-England village 
was ever better fitted to draw to it the rising 
generation on Sunday, than those poles to lift 
up my beans towards heaven. Some of them 
did run up the sticks seven feet, and then strag- 
gled off into the air in a wanton manner ; but 
more than half of them went galivanting off to 
the neighboring grape-trellis, and wound their 
tendrils with the tendrils of the grape, with a 
disregard of the proprieties of life which is a 
satire upon human nature. And the grape is 
morally no better. I think the ancients, who 
were not troubled with the recondite mystery of 
protoplasm, were right in the mythic union of 
Bacchus and Venus. , 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 87 

Talk about the Darwinian theory of develop- 
ment, and the principle of natural selection ! I 
should like to see a garden let to run in accord- 
ance with it. If I had left my vegetables and 
weeds to a free fight, in which the strongest 
specimens only should come to maturity, and 
the weaker go to the wail, I can clearly see 
that I should have had a pretty mess of it. It 
would have been a scene of passion and license 
and brutality. The " pusley " would have stran- 
gled the strawberry ; the upright corn, which 
has now ears to hear the guilty beating of the 
hearts of the children who steal the raspberries, 
would have been dragged to the earth by the 
wandering bean ; the snake-grass would have 
left no place for the potatoes under ground ; 
and the tomatoes would have been swamped by 
the lusty weeds. With a firm hand, I have had 
to make my own "natural selection." Nothing 
will so well bear watching as a garden, except a 



MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



family of children next door. Their power of 
selection beats mine. If they could read half 
as well as they can steal awhile away, I should 
put up a notice, " Children , beware ! There is 
Protoplasm here!' But I suppose it would have 
no effect. I believe they would eat protoplasm 
as quick as anything else, ripe or green. I won- 
der if this is going to be a cholera-year. Con- 
siderable cholera is the only thing that would 
let my apples and pears ripen. Of course I do 
not care for the fruit ; but I do not want to take 
the responsibility of letting so much " life-matter,'' 
full of crude and even wicked vegetable-human 
tendencies, pass into the composition of the 
neighbors' children, some of whom may be as 
immortal as snake-grass. There ought to be a 
public meeting about this, and resolutions, and 
perhaps a clam-bake. At least, it ought to be 
put into the catechism, and put in strong. 




4 / tried the scare-craw plan. " — Page So. 




TENTH WEEK. 




THINK I have discovered the way to 
H§]| keep peas from the birds. I tried the 
scarecrow plan, in a way which I 
thought would outwit the shrewdest bird. The 
brain of the bird is not large ; but it is all con- 
centrated on one object, and that is the attempt 
to elude the devices of modern civilization which 
injure his chances of food. I knew that, if I 
put up a complete stuffed man, the bird would 
detect the imitation at once : the perfection of 
the thing would show him that it was a trick. 
People always overdo the matter when they at- 
tempt deception. I therefore hung some loose 
garments, of a bright color, upon a rake-head 



90 



MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 



and set them up among the vines. The supposi- 
tion was, that the bird would think there was an 
effort to trap him, that there was a man behind, 
holding up these garments, and would sing, as he 
kept at a distance, " You can't catch me with 
any such double device." The bird would know, 
or think he knew, that I would not hang up such 
a scare, in the expectation that it would pass for 
a man, and deceive a bird ; and he would thf re- 
fore look for a deeper plot. I expected to c ut- 
wit the bird by a duplicity that was simplicity 
itself. I may have over-calculated the sagacity 
and reasoning power of the bird. At any rate, I 
did over-calculate the amount of peas I should 
gather. 

But my game was only half played. In an- 
other part of the garden were other peas, grow- 
ing and blowing. To these I took good care not 
to attract the attention of the bird by any scare- 
crow whatever ! I left the old scarecrow con- 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 9 1 

spicuously flaunting above the old vines ; and by 
this means I hope to keep the attention of the 
birds confined to that side of the garden. I am 
convinced that this is the true use of a scare- 
crow : it is a lure, and not a warning. If you 
wish to save men from any particular vice, set 
up a tremendous cry of warning about some 
other ; and they will all give their special efforts 
to the one to which attention is called. This 
profound truth is about the only thing I have/ 
yet realized out of my pea-vines. 

However, the garden does begin to yield. I 
know of nothing that makes one feel more com- 
placent, in these July days, than to have his 
vegetables from his own garden. What an ef- 
fect it has on the market-man and the butcher ! 
It is a kind of declaration of independence. 
The market-man shows me hi$ peas and beets 
and tomatoes, and supposes he shall send me out 
some with the meat. " No, I thank you," I say 



92 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

carelessly : " I am raising my own this year." 
Whereas I have been wont to remark, " Your 
vegetables look a little wilted this weather," I 
now say, " What a fine lot of vegetables you Ve 
got ! " When a man is not going to buy, he can 
afford to be generous. To raise his own vege- 
tables makes a person feel, somehow, more lib- 
eral. I think the butcher is touched by the in- 
fluence, and cuts off a better roast for me. The 
butcher is my friend when he sees that I am not 
wholly dependent on him. 

It is at home, however, that the effect is most 
marked, though sometimes in a way that I had 
not expected. I have never read of any Roman 
supper that seemed to me equal to a dinner of 
my own vegetables ; when everything on the 
cable is the product of my own labor, except 
the clams, which I have not been able to raise 
yet, and the chickens, which have withdrawn 
from the garden just when they were most at- 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 93 

tractive. It is strange what a taste you sud- 
denly have for things you never liked before. 
The squash has always been to me a dish of 
contempt ; but I eat it now as if it were my 
best friend. I never cared for the beet or the 
bean ; but I fancy now that I could eat them all, 
tops and all, so completely have they been trans- 
formed by the soil in which they grew. I think 
the squash is less squashy, and the beet has a 
deeper hue of rose, for my care of them. 

I had begun to nurse a good deal of pride in 
presiding over a table whereon was the fruit of 
my honest industry. But woman ! — John Stuart 
Mill is right when he says that we do not know 
anything about women. Six thousand years is 
as one day with them. I thought I had some- 
thing to do with those vegetables. But when I 
saw Polly seated at her side of the table, presid- 
ing over the new and susceptible vegetables, 
flanked by the squash and the beans, and smil- 



94 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

ing upon the green corn and the new potatoes, 
as cool as the cucumbers which lay sliced in ice 
before her, and when she began to dispense the 
fresh dishes, I saw at once that the day of my 
destiny was over. You would have thought that 
she owned all the vegetables, and had raised 
them all from their earliest years. Such quiet, 
vegetable airs ! Such gracious appropriation ! 
At length I said, — 

" Polly, do you know who planted that squash, 
or those squashes ? " 

" James, I suppose." 

" Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them, to 
a certain extent. But who hoed them ? " 

" We did." 

" We did ! " I said in the most sarcastic man' 
ner. " And I suppose we put on the sackcloth 
and ashes, when the striped bug came at four 
o'clock, a. m., and we watched the tender leaves, 
and watered night and morning the feeble plants 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 95 

I tell you, Polly/' said I, uncorking the Bor- 
deaux raspberry vinegar, u there is not a pea 
here that does not represent a drop of moisture 
wrung from my brow, not a beet that does not 
stand for a back-ache, not a squash that has not 
caused me untold anxiety ; and 1 did hope — 
but I will say no more." 

Observation. — In this sort of family discus- 
sion, " I will say no more " is the most effective 
thing you can close up with. 

I am not an alarmist. I hope I am as cool as 
anybody this hot summer. But I am quite ready 
to say to Polly, or any other woman, " You can 
have the ballot ; only leave me the vegetables, 
or, what is more important, the consciousness of 
power in vegetables." I see how it is. Woman 
is now supreme in the house. She already 
stretches out her hand to grasp the garden. 
She will gradually control everything. Woman 
is one of the ablest and most cunning creatures 



96 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

who have ever mingled in human affairs. I 
understand those women who say they don't 
want the ballot. They purpose to hold the real 
power while we go through the mockery of mak- 
ing laws. They want the power without the 
responsibility. (Suppose my squash had not 
come up, or my beans — as they threatened at 
one time — had gone the wrong way : where 
would I have been ? ) We are to be held to all 
the responsibilities. Woman takes the lead in 
all the departments, leaving us politics only. 
And what is politics ? Let me raise the vege- 
tables of a nation, says Polly, and I care not 
who makes its politics. Here I sat at the table, 
armed with the ballot, but really powerless among 
my own vegetables. While we are being amused 
by the ballot, woman is quietly taking things 
into her own hands. 



<3P» 



ELEVENTH WEEK 




ERHAPS, after all, it is not what you 
get out of a garden, but what you put 
into it, that is the most remunerative. 
What is a man ? A question frequently asked, 
and never, so far as I know, satisfactorily an- 
swered. He commonly spends his seventy 
years, if so many are given him, in getting 
ready to enjoy himself. How many hours, how 
many minutes, does one get of that pure con- 
tent which is happiness ? I do not mean lazi- 
ness, which is always discontent ; but that se- 
rene enjoyment, in whi:h all the natural senses 
have easy play, and the unnatural ones haw 
a holiday. There is probably nothing that has 
S Q 



98 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

such a tranquillizing effect, and leads into such 
content, as gardening. By gardening, I do not 
mean that insane desire to raise vegetables 
which some have ; but the philosophical occu- 
pation of contact with the earth, and compan- 
ionship with gently growing things and patient 
processes ; that exercise which soothes the spirit, 
and develops the deltoid muscles. 

In half an hour I can hoe myself right away 
from this world, as we commonly see it, into a 
large place, where there are no obstacles. What 
an occupation it is for thought ! The mind 
broods like a hen on eggs. The trouble is, that 
you are not thinking about anything, but are 
really vegetating like the plants around you./ 
I begin to know what the joy of the grape-vine 
is in running up the trellis, which is similar to 
that of the squirrel in running up a tree. We 
all have something in our nature that requires 
contact with the earth. In the solitude of gar- 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 99 

den-labor, one gets into a sort of communion 
with the vegetable life, which makes the old 
mythology possible. For instance, I can believe 
that the dryads are plenty this summer : my 
garden is like an ash-heap. Almost all the 
moisture it has had in weeks has been the sweat 
of honest industry. 

The pleasure of gardening in these days, when 
the thermometer is at ninety, is one that I fear 
I shall not be able to make intelligible to my 
readers, many of whom do not appreciate the 
delight of soaking in the sunshine. I suppose 
that the sun, going through a man, as it will on 
such a day, takes out of him rheumatism, con- 
sumption, and every other disease, except sud- 
den death — from sun-stroke. But, aside from 
this, there is an odor from the evergreens, the 
hedges, the various plants and vines, that is only 
expressed and set afloat at a high temperature, 
which is delicious ; and, hot as it may he, a little 



IOO MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

breeze will come at intervals, which can be heard 
in the tree-tops, and which is an unobtrusive 
benediction. I hear a quail or two whistling in 
the ravine ; and there is a good deal of fragmen- 
tary conversation going on among the birds, 
even on the warmest days. The companionship 
of Calvin, also, counts for a good deal. He 
usually attends me, unless I work too long in 
one place ; sitting down on the turf, displaying 
the ermine of his breast, and watching my move- 
ments with great intelligence. He has a feline 
and genuine love for the beauties of Nature, and 
will establish himself where there is a good view, 
and look on it for hours. He always accompa- 
nies us when we go to gather the vegetables, 
seeming to be desirous to know what we are to 
have for dinner. He is a connoisseur in the 
garden ; being fond of almost all the vegetables, 
except the cucumber, — a dietetic hint to man. 
I believe it is also said that the pig will not eat 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. IOI 

tobacco. These are important facts. It is sin- 
gular, however, that those who hold up the pigs 
as models to us never hold us up as models to 
the pigs. 

I wish I knew as much about natural history 
and the habits of animals as Calvin does. He 
is the closest observer I ever saw ; and there are 
few species of animals on the place that he has 
not analyzed. I think that he has, to use a 
euphemism very applicable to him, got outside 
of every one of them, except the toad. To the 
toad he is entirely indifferent ; but I presume 
he knows that the toad is the most useful ani- 
mal in the garden. I think the Agricultural 
Society ought to offer a prize for the finest toad. 
When Polly comes to sit in the shade near my 
strawberry-beds, to shell peas, Calvin is alw, 
lying near in apparent obliviousness ; but net 
the slightest unusual sound can be made in the 
bushes, that he is not alert, and prepared to in? 



102 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

vestigate the cause of it. It is this habit of 
observation, so cultivated, which has given him 
such a trained mind, and made him so philo- 
sophical. It is within the capacity of even the 
humblest of us to attain this. 

And, speaking of the philosophical temper, 
there is no class of men whose society is more 
to be desired for this quality than that of plumb- 
ers. They are the most agreeable men I know ; 
and the boys in the business begin to be agreeable 
very early. I suspect the secret of it is, that 
they are agreeable by the hour. In the driest 
days, my fountain became disabled : the pipe 
was stopped up. A couple of plumbers, with 
the implements of their craft, came out to view 
the situation. There was a good deal of differ- 
ence of opinion about where the stoppage was. 
I found the plumbers perfectly willing to sit 
down and talk about it, ■ — talk by the hour. 
Some of their guesses and remarks were ex- 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 103 

t?eedingly ingenious ; and their general observa- 
tions on other subjects were excellent in their 
way, and could hardly have been better if they 
had been made by the job. The work dragged 
a little, — as it is apt to do by the hour. The 
plumbers had occasion to make me several visits. 
Sometimes they would find, upon arrival, that 
they had forgotten some indispensable tool ; and 
one would go back to the shop, a mile and a 
half, after it ; and his comrade would await his 
return with the most exemplary patience, and 
sit down and talk, — always by the hour. I do 
not know but it is a habit to have something 
wanted at the shop. They seemed to me very 
good workmen, and always willing to stop and 
talk about the job, or anything else, when I went 
near them. Nor had they any of that impetuous 
hurry that is said to be the bane of our Ameri- 
can civilization. To their credit be it said, that 
I never observed anything of it in them. They 



104 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

can afford to wait. Two of them will sometimes 
wait nearly half a day while a comrade goes 
for a tool. They are patient and philosophi- 
cal. It is a great pleasure to meet such men. 
One only wishes there was some work he could 
do for them by the hour. There ought to be 
reciprocity. I think they have very nearly 
solved the problem of Life: it is to work for 
other people, never for yourself, and get your 
pay by the hour. You then have no anxiety, 
and little work. If you do things by the job, 
you are perpetually driven : the hours are 
scourges. If you work by the hour, you gently 
sail on the stream of Time, which is always 
bearing you on to the haven of Pay, whether 
you make any effort, or not. Working by the 
hour tends to make one moral. A plumber 
working by the job, trying to unscrew a rusty, 
refractory nut, in a cramped position, where the 
tongs continually slipped off, would swear ; but 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 



I05 



I never heard one of them swear, or exhibit the 
least impatience at such a vexation, working by 
the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid 
by the hour. How sweet the flight of time 
seems to his calm mind ! 





TWELFTH WEEK 




R. HORACE GREELEY, the in- 

troduction of whose name confers 
an honor upon this page (although 
I ought to say that it is used entirely without 
his consent), is my sole authority in agriculture. 
In politics, I do not dare to follow him ; but in 
agriculture he is irresistible. When/therefore, I 
find him advising Western farmers not to hill 
up their corn, I think that his advice must be 
political. You must hill up your corn. People 
always have hilled up their corn. It would 
take a constitutional amendment to change the 
practice, that has pertained ever since maize was 
raised. " It will stand the drought better," says 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 107 

Mr. Greeley, " if the ground is left level." I 
have corn in my garden, ten and twelve feet 
high, strong and lusty, standing the drought 
like a grenadier ; and it is hilled. In advising 
this radical change, Mr. Greeley evidently has 
a political purpose. He might just as well say 
that you should not hill beans, when everybody 
knows that a " hill of beans " is one of the most 
expressive symbols of disparagement. When I 
become -too lazy to hill my corn, I, too, shall go 
into politics. 

I am satisfied that it is useless to try to culti- 
vate " pusley." I set a little of it one side, and 
gave it some extra care. It did not thrive as 
well as that which I was fighting. The fact is, 
there is a spirit of moral perversity in the plant, 
which makes it grow the more, the more it is 
interfered with. I am satisfied of that. I doubt 
if any one has raised more " pusley " this year 
than I have ; and my warfare with it has been 



108 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

continual. Neither of us has slept much. If 
you combat it, it will grow, to use an expression 
that will be understood by many, like the devil. 
I have a neighbor, a good Christian man, be- 
nevolent, and a person of good judgment. He 
planted next to me an acre of turnips recently. 
A few days after he went to look at his crop ; 
and he found the entire ground covered with a 
thick and luxurious carpet of " pusley," with a tur- 
nip-top worked in here and there as an ornament. 
I have seldom seen so thrifty a field. I advised 
my neighbor next time to sow " pusley " ; and 
then he might get a few turnips. I wish there 
was more demand in our city markets for " pus- 
ley " as a salad. I can recommend it. 

It does not take a great man to soon discover 
that, in raising anything, the greater part of the 
plants goes into stalk and leaf, and the fruit is a 
most inconsiderable portion. I plant and hoe a 
hill of corn : it grows green and stout, and waves 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING* IO9 

its broad leaves high in the air, and is months in 
perfecting itself, and then yields us not enough 
for a dinner. It grows because it delights to do 
so, — to take the juices out of my ground, to 
absorb my fertilizers, to wax luxuriant, and dis- 
port itself in the summer air, and with very 
little thought of making any return to me. I 
might go all through my garden and fruit-trees 
with a similar result. I have heard of places 
where there was very little land to the acre. 
It is universally true that there is a great deal 
of vegetable show and fuss for the result pro- 
duced. I do not complain of this. One cannot 
expect vegetables to be better than men : and 
they make a great deal of ostentatious splurge ; 
and many of them come to no result at last. 
Usually, the more show of leaf and wood, the 
less fruit. This melancholy reflection is thrown 
in here in order to make Jog-days seem cheer- 
ful in comparison. 



IIO MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

One of the minor pleasures of life is that of 
controlling vegetable activity and aggressions 
with the pruning-knife. Vigorous and rapid 
growth is, however, a necessity to the sport. 
To prune feeble plants and shrubs is like act- 
ing the part of dry-nurse to a sickly orphan. 
You must feel the blood of Nature bound under 
your hand, and get the thrill of its life in yout 
nerves. To control and culture a strong, thrifty 
plant in this way, is like steering a ship under 
full headway, or driving a locomotive with your 
hand on the lever, or pulling the reins over a fast 
horse when his blood and tail are up. I do not 
understand, by the way, the pleasure of the 
jockey in setting up the tail of the horse arti- 
ficially. If I had a horse with a tail not able 
to sit up, I should feed the horse, and curry 
him into good spirits, and let him set up his own 
tail. When I see a poor, spiritless horse going 
by with an artificially set-up tail, it is only a 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. Ill 

signal of distress. I desire to be surrounded 
only by healthy, vigorous plants and trees, which 
require constant cutting-in and management. 
Merely to cut away dead branches is like per- 
petual attendance at a funeral, and puts one in 
low spirits. I want to have a garden and or- 
chard rise up and meet me every morning, with 
the request to "lay on, Macduff." I respect old 
age ; but an old currant-bush, hoary with mossy 
bark, is a melancholy spectacle. 

I suppose the time has come when I am ex- 
pected to say something about fertilizers : all 
agriculturists do. When you plant, you think 
you cannot fertilize too much : when you get the 
bills for the manure, you think you cannot fer- 
tilize too little. Of course you do not expect to 
get the value of the manure back in fruits and 
vegetables ; but something is due to science, — 
to chemistry in particular. You must have a 
knowledge of soils, must have your soil analyzed, 



112 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

and then go into a course of experiments to find 
what it needs. It needs analyzing, — that, I am 
clear about : everything needs that. You had 
better have the soil analyzed before you buy : if 
there is " pusley " in it, let it alone. See if it is 
a soil that requires much hoeing, and how fine it 
will get if there is no rain for two months. But 
when you come to fertilizing, if I understand the 
agricultural authorities, you open a pit that will 
ultimately swallow you up, — farm and all. It 
is the great subject of modern times, how to 
fertilize without ruinous expense ; how, in short, 
not to starve the earth to death while we get our 
living out of it. Practically, the business is 
hardly to the taste of a person of a poetic turn 
of mind. The details of fertilizing are not 
agreeable. Michael Angelo, who tried every 
art, and nearly every trade, never gave his mind 
to fertilizing. It is much pleasanter and easier 
to fertilize with a pen, as the agricultural writers 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 



113 



do, than with a fork. And this leads me to say, 
that, in carrying on a garden yourself, you must 
have a " consulting " gardener ; that is, a man to 
do the heavy and unpleasant work. To such a 
man, I say, in language used by Demosthenes to 
the Athenians, and which is my advice to all 
gardeners, " Fertilize, fertilize, fertilize I " 





THIRTEENTH WEEK. 




FIND that gardening has unsurpassed 
ft advantages for the study of natural his- 
tory ; and some scientific facts have 
come under my own observation, which cannot 
fail to interest naturalists and un-naturalists in 
about the same degree. Much, for instance, has 
been written about the toad, an animal without 
which no garden would be complete. But little 
account has been made of his value : the beauty 
of his eye alone has been dwelt on ; and little 
has been said of his mouth, and its important 
function as a fly and bug trap. His habits, and 
even his origin, have been misunderstood. Why, 
as an illustration, are toads so plenty after a 




u The toads came out of their holes." — Page 115. 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. II5 

thunder-shower ? All my life long, no one has 
been able to answer me that question. Why, 
after a heavy shower, and in the midst of it, do 
such multitudes of toads, especially little ones, 
hop about on the gravel-walks ? For many 
years, I believed that they rained down ; and I 
suppose many people think so still. They are 
so small, and they come in such numbers only 
in the shower, that the supposition is not a vio- 
lent one. " Thick as toads after a shower," is 
one of our best proverbs. I asked an explana- 
tion of this of a thoughtful woman, — indeed, a 
leader in the great movement to have all the 
toads hop in any direction, without any distinc- 
tion of sex or religion. Her reply was, that the 
toads come out during the shower to get water. 
This, however, is not the fact. I have discovered 
that they come out not to get water. I deluged 
a dry flower-bed, the other night, with pailful 
after pailful of water. Instantly the toads came 



Il6 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

out of their holes in the dirt, by tens and twen- 
ties and fifties, to escape death by drowning. 
The big ones fled away in a ridiculous streak of 
hopping ; and the little ones sprang about in the 
wildest confusion. The toad is just like any 
other land animal : when his house is full of 
water, he quits it. These facts, with the draw- 
ings of the water and the toads, are at the ser- 
vice of the distinguished scientists of Albany in 
New York, who were so much impressed by the 
Cardiff Giant. 

The domestic cow is another animal whose 
ways I have a chance to study, and also to oblit- 
erate in the garden. One of my neighbors has 
a cow, but no land ; and he seems desirous to 
pasture her on the surface of the land of other 
people : a very reasonable desire. The man 
proposed that he should be allowed to cut the 
grass from my grounds for his cow. I knew the 
cow, having often had her in my garden ; knew 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. II7 

her gait and the size of her feet, which struck 
me as a little large for the size of the body. Hav- 
ing no cow myself, but acquaintance with my 
neighbor's, I told him that I thought it would 
be fair for him to have the grass. He was, 
therefore, to keep the grass nicely cut, and to 
keep his cow at home. I waited some time after 
the grass needed cutting ; and, as my neighbor 
did not appear, I hired it cut. No sooner was it 
done than he promptly appeared, and raked up 
most of it, and carried it away. He had evi- 
dently been waiting that opportunity. * When 
the grass grew again, the neighbor did not ap- 
pear with his scythe ; but one morning I found 
the cow tethered on the sward, hitched near the 
clothes-horse, a short distance from the house. 
This seemed to be the man's idea of the best 
way to cut the grass. I disliked to have the cow 
there, because I knew her inclination to pull up 
the stake, and transfer her field of mowing to 



Il8 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

the garden, but especially because of her voice. 
She has the most melancholy " moo " I ever 
heard. It is like the wail of one un-infallible, 
excommunicated, and lost. It is a most distress- 
ing perpetual reminder of the brevity of life and 
the shortness of feed. It is unpleasant to the 
family. We sometimes hear it in the middle of 
the night, breaking the silence like a suggestion 
of coming calamity. It is as bad as the howling 
of a dog at a funeral. 

I told the man about it ; but he seemed to 
think 'that he was not responsible for the cow's 
voice. I then told him to take her away ; and 
he did, at intervals, shifting her to different parts 
of the grounds in my absence, so that the deso- 
late voice would startle us from unexpected quar- 
ters. If I were to unhitch the cow, and turn her 
loose, I knew where she would go. If I were to 
lead her away, the question was, Where ? for 
I did not fancy leading a cow about till I could 







'• 2 told the man that 1 could not have the cow in the grounds* 

Page 119. 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 19 

find somebody who was willing to pasture her. 
To this dilemma had my excellent neighbor 
reduced me. But I found him, one Sunday 
morning, — a day when it would not do to get 
angry, — tying his cow at the foot of the hill ; 
the beast all the time going on in that abomi- 
nable voice. I told the man that I could not 
have the cow in the grounds. He said, " All 
right, boss " ; but he did not go away. I asked 
him to clear out. The man, who is a French 
sympathizer from the Republic of Ireland, kept 
his temper perfectly. He said he was n't doing 
anything, just feeding his cow a bit : he would 
n't make me the least trouble in the world. I 
reminded him that he had been told again and 
again not to come here ; that he might have all 
the grass, but he should not bring his cow upon 
the premises. The imperturbable man assented 
to everything that I said, and kept on feeding his 
cow. Before I got him to go to fresh scenes and 



120 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN, 

pastures new, the Sabbath was almost broken : 
but it was saved by one thing ; it is difficult to 
be emphatic when no one is emphatic on the 
other side. The man and his cow have taught 
me a great lesson, which I shall recall when I 
keep a cow. I can recommend this cow, if any- 
body wants one, as a steady boarder, whose 
keeping will cost the owner little ; but, if her 
milk is at all like her voice, those who drink it 
are on the straight road to lunacy. 

I think I have said that we have a game-pre- 
serve. We keep quails, or try to, in the thickly 
wooded, bushed, and brushed ravine. This bird 
is a great favorite with us, dead or alive, on ac- 
count of its tasteful plumage, its tender flesh, its 
domestic virtues, and its pleasant piping. Be- 
sides, although I appreciate toads and cows, and 
all that sort of thing, I like to have a game-pre- 
serve more in the English style. And we did. 
For in July, while the game-law was on, and the 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. I2i. 

young quails were coming on, we were awakened 
one morning by firing, — musketry-firing, close 
at hand. My first thought was, that war was 
declared ; but, as I should never pay much at- 
tention to war declared at that time in the morn- 
ing, I went to sleep again. But the occurrence 
was repeated, — and not only early in the morn- 
ing, but at night. There was calling of dogs, 
breaking down of brush, and firing of guns. It 
is hardly pleasant to have guns fired in the di- 
rection of the house, at your own quails. The 
hunters could be sometimes seen, but never caught. 
Their best time was about sunrise ; but, before one 
could dress and get to the front, they would retire. 
One morning, about four o'clock, I heard the 
battle renewed. I sprang up, but not in arms, 
and went to a window. Polly (like another 
" blessed damozel ") flew to another window, — 

" The blessed damozel leaned out 
From the gold bar of heaven,' , — 

6 



122 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

and reconnoitred from behind the blinds. 

" The wonder was not yet quite gone 
From that still look of hers," 

when an armed man and a legged dog appeared 
in the opening. I was vigilantly watching him. 

" And now 

She spoke through the still weather." 

" Are you afraid to speak to him ? " asked 
Polly. Not exactly, 

" she spoke as when 
The stars sang in their spheres." 

Stung by this inquiry, I leaned out of the 
window till 

" The bar /leaned on (was) warm," 

and cried, — 

11 Halloo, there ! What are you doing ? " 

" Look out he don't shoot you/' called out 

Polly from the other window, suddenly going on 

another tack. 

I explained that a sportsman would not be 






4t\ 




" Looking for a lost hen." — Page 123. 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 23 

likely to shoot a gentleman in his own house, 
with bird-shot, so long as quails were to be had. 

" You have no business here : what are you 
after ? " I repeated. 

" Looking for a lost hen," said the man as he 
strode away. 

The reply was so satisfactory and conclusive 
that I shut the blinds and went to bed. 

But one evening I overhauled one of the 
poachers. Hearing his dog in the thicket, I 
rushed through the brush, and came in sight 
of the hunter as he was retreating down the 
road. He came to a halt ; and we had some 
conversation in a high key. Of course I threat- 
ened to prosecute him. I believe that is the 
thing to do in such cases ; but how I was to do 
it, when I did not know his name or ancestry, 
and could n't see his face, never occurred to me. 
(I remember, now, that a farmer once proposed 
to prosecute me when I was fishing in a trout- 



124 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

brook on his farm, and asked my name for that 
purpose.) He said he should smile to see me 
prosecute him. 

" You can't do it : there ain't no notice up 
about trespassing." This view of the common 
law impressed me ; and I said, — 

" But these are private grounds." 

" Private h — ! " was all his response. 

You can't argue much with a man who has a 
gun in his hands, when you have none. Besides, 
it might be a needle-gun, for aught I knew. I 
gave it up, and we separated. 

There is this disadvantage about having a 
game-preserve attached to your garden : it 
makes life too lively. 




FOURTEENTH WEEK. 




.N these golden latter August days, Na- 
ture has come to a serene equilibrium. 
Having flowered and fruited, she is en- 
joying herself. I can see how things are going: 
it is a down-hill business after this ; but, for the 
time being, it is like swinging in a hammock, — 
such a delicious air, such a graceful repose ! I 
take off my hat as I stroll into the garden and 
look about ; and it does seem as if Nature had 
sounded a truce. I did n't ask for it. I went 
out with a hoe ; but the serene sweetness dis- 
arms me Thrice is he armed who has a long- 
handled hoe, with a double blade. Yet to-day 
I am almost ashamed to appear in such a bcl- 



126 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

ligerent fashion, with this terrible mitrailleuse 
of gardening. 

The tomatoes are getting tired of ripening, 
and are beginning to go into a worthless con- 
dition, — green. The cucumbers cumber the 
ground, — great yellow, over-ripe objects, no 
more to be compared to the crisp beauty of 
their youth than is the fat swine of the sty 
to the clean little pig. The nutmeg-melons, 
having covered themselves with delicate lace- 
work, are now ready to leave the vine. I know 
they are ripe if they come easily off the 
stem. 

Moral Observations. — You can tell when peo- 
ple are ripe by their willingness to let go. Rich- 
ness and ripeness are not exactly the same. 
The rich are apt to hang to the stem with 
tenacity. I have nothing against the rich. If 
I were not virtuous, I should like to be rich. 
But we cannot have everything, as the man said 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 27 

when he was down with small-pox and cholera, 
and the yellow-fever came into the neighbor- 
hood. 

Now, the grapes, soaked in this liquid gold, 
called air, begin to turn, mindful of the injunc- 
tion, " to turn or burn." The clusters under the 
leaves are getting quite purple, but look better 
than they taste. I think there is no danger 
but they will be gathered as soon as they are 
ripe One of the blessings of having an open 
garden is, that I do not have to watch my fruit : 
a dozen youngsters do that, and let it waste no 
time after it matures. I wish it were possible to 
grow a variety of grape like the explosive bul- 
lets, that should explode in the stomach: the 
vine would make such a nice border for the gar- 
den, — a masked battery of grape. The pears, 
too, are getting russet and heavy ; and here and 
there amid the shining leaves one gleams as 
ruddy as the cheek of the Nutbrown Maid 



128 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

The Flemish Beauties come off readily from the 
stem, if I take them in my hand : they say all 
kinds of beauty come off by handling. 

The garden is peace as much as if it were an 
empire. Even the man's cow lies down under 
the tree where the man has tied her, with such 
an air of contentment, that I have small desire 
to disturb her. She is chewing my cud as if it 
were hers. Well, eat on and chew on, melan- 
choly brute. I have not the heart to tell the 
man to take you away : and it would do no good 
if I had ; he would n't do it. The man has not 
a taking way. Munch on, ruminant creature. 
The frost will soon come ; the grass will be 
brown. I will be charitable while this blessed 
lull continues : for our benevolences must soon 
be turned to other and more distant objects, — 
the amelioration of the condition of the Jews, 
the education of theological young men in the 
West, and the like. 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 29 

I do not know that these appearances are de- 
ceitful ; but I sufficiently know that this is a 
wicked world, to be glad that I have taken it on 
shares. In fact, I could not pick the pears 
alone, not to speak of eating them. When I 
climb the trees, and throw down the dusky 
fruit, Polly catches it in her apron ; nearly al- 
ways, however, letting go when it drops, the fall 
is so sudden. The sun gets in her face ; and, 
every time a pear comes down, it is a surprise, 
like having a tooth out, she says. 

" If I could n't hold an apron better than 
that!" — But the sentence is not finished: 
it is useless to finish that sort of a sentence in 
this delicious weather. Besides, conversation is 
dangerous. As, for instance, towards evening I 
am preparing a bed for a sowing of turnips, ^r- 
not that I like turnips in the least ; but this is 
the season to sow them. Polly comes out, and 
extemporizes her usual seat to " consult me ' 
6* 1 



I3O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

about matters while I work. I well know that 
something is coming. 

" This is a rotation of crops, is n't it ? " 

" Yes : I have rotated the gone-to-seed lettuce 
off, and expect to rotate the turnips in ; it is a 
political fashion." 

" Is n't it a shame that the tomatoes are all 
getting ripe at once ? What a lot of squashes ! 
I wish we had an oyster-bed. Do you want me 
to help you any more than I. am helping ? " 

" No, I thank you." (I wonder what all this 
is about ?) 

" Don't you think we could sell some straw- 
berries next year ? " 

"By all means, sell anything. We shall no 
doubt get rich out of this acre." 

"Don't be foolish." 

And now ! 

" Don't you think it would be nice to have 
a ? " — - And Polly unfolds a small scheme of 




•■ Polly unfolds a small scheme of benevolence" — Page 130. 



vVHAT 1 KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. I3I 

benevolence, which is not quite enough to break 
me, and is really to be executed in an economical 
manner. " Would n't that be nice ? " 

" O yes ! And where is the money to come 
from?" 

" I thought we had agreed to sell the straw- 
berries." 

" Certainly. But I think we would make 
more money if we sold the plants now." 

" Well," said Polly, concluding the whole mat- 
ter, " I am going to do it." And, having thus 
" consulted " me, Polly goes away ; and I put in 
the turnip-seeds quite thick, determined to raise 
enough to sell. But. not even this mercenary 
thought can ruffle my mind as I rake off the 
loamy bed. I notice, however, that the spring 
smell has gone out of the dirt. That went into 
the first crop. 

In this peaceful unison with yielding nature, I 
was a little taken aback to find that a new enemy 



132 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

had turned up. The celery had just rubbed 
through the fiery scorching of the drought, and 
stood a faint chance to grow ; when I noticed on 
the green leaves a big green-and-black worm, 
called, I believe, the celery-worm: but I don't 
know who called him ; I am sure I did not. It 
was almost ludicrous that he should turn up 
here, just at the end of the season, when I sup- 
posed that my war with the living animals was 
over. Yet he was, no doubt, predestinated ; for 
he went to work as cheerfully as if he had arrived 
in June, when everything was fresh and vigorous. 
It beats me — Nature does. I doubt not, that, 
if I were to leave my garden now for a week, it 
would n't know me on my return. The patch I 
scratched over for the turnips, and left as clean 
as earth, is already full of ambitious " pusley," 
which grows with all the confidence of youth 
and the skill of old age. It beats the serpent 
as an emblem of immortality. While all the 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 



133 



others of us in the garden rest and sit in com- 
fort a moment, upon the summit of the summer, 
it is as rampant and vicious as ever. It accepts 
no armistice. 




FIFTEENTH WEEK, 




. T is said that absence conquers all things, 
love included ; but it has a contrary 
effect on a garden. I was absent for 
two or three weeks. I left my garden a para- 
dise, as paradises go in this protoplastic world ; 
and when I returned the trail of the serpent 
was over it all, so to speak. (This is in addition 
to the actual snakes in it, which are large enough 
to strangle children of average size.) I asked 
Polly if she had seen to the garden while I was 
away, and she said she had. I found that all 
the melons had been seen to, and the early 
grapes and pears. The green worm had also 
seen to about half the celery ; and a large flock 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 35 

of apparently perfectly domesticated chickens 
were roaming over the ground, gossiping in the 
hot September sun, and picking up any odd trifle 
that might be left. On the whole, the garden 
could not have been better seen to ; though it 
would take a sharp eye to see the potato-vines 
amid the rampant grass and weeds. 

The new strawberry-plants, for one thing, had 
taken advantage of my absence. Every one of 
them had sent out as many scarlet runners as an 
Indian tribe has. Some of them had blos- 
somed ; and a few had gone so far as to bear 
ripe berries, — long, pear-shaped fruit, hanging 
like the ear-pendants of an East-Indian bride. 
I could not but admire the persistence of these 
zealous plants, which seemed determined to prop- 
agate themselves both by seeds and roots, and 
make sure of immortality in some way. Even 
the Colfax variety was as ambitious as the 
others. After having seen the declining letter 



I36 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

of Mr, Colfax, I did not suppose that this vine 
would run any more, and intended to root it 
out. But one can never say what these politi 
cians mean ; and I shall let this variety grow 
until after the next election, at least ; although 
I hear that the fruit is small, and rather sour. 
If there is any variety of strawberries that really 
declines to run, and devotes itself to a private 
life of fruit-bearing, I should like to get it. I 
may mention here, since we are on politics, that 
the Doolittle raspberries had sprawled all over 
the strawberry-beds : so true is it that politics 
makes strange bedfellows. 

But another enemy had come into the straw- 
berries, which, after all that has been said in 
these papers, I am almost ashamed to mention. 
But does the preacher in the pulpit, Sunday 
after Sunday, year after year, shrink from speak- 
ing of sin ? I refer, of course, to the greatest 
enemy of mankind, " p-sl-y." The ground was 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 37 

carpeted with it I should think that this was 
the tenth crop of the season ; and it was as good 
as the first. I see no reason why our northern 
soil is not as prolific as that of the tropics, and 
will not produce as many crops in the yean 
The mistake we make is in trying to force things 
that are not natural to it. I have no doubt that, 
if we turn our attention to " pusley," we can 
beat the world. 

I had no idea, until recently, how generally 
this simple and thrifty plant iz feared and hated. 
Far beyond what I had regarded as the bounds 
of civilization, it is held as one of the mysteries 
of a fallen world ; accompanying the home mis- 
sionary on his wanderings, and preceding the 
footsteps of the Tract Society. I was not long 
ago in the Adirondacks. We had built a camp 
for the night, in the heart of the woods, high up 
on John's Brook and near the foot of Mount 
Marcy : I can see the lovely spot now. It was 



I3& MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

on the bank of the crystal, rocky stream, at the 
foot of high and slender falls, which poured into 
a broad amber basin. Out of this basin we had 
just taken trout enough for our supper, which 
had been killed, and roasted over the fire on 
sharp sticks, and eaten before they had an op- 
portunity to feel the chill of this deceitful world. 
We were lying under the hut of spruce-bark, on 
fragrant hemlock-boughs, talking, after supper. 
In front of us was a huge fire of birch-logs ; 
and over it we could see the top of the falls 
glistening in the moonlight ; and the roar of the 
falls, and the brawling of the stream near us, 
filled all the ancient woods. It was a scene 
upon which one would think no thought of sin 
could enter. We were talking with old Phelps, 
the guide. Old Phelps is at once guide, phi- 
losopher, and friend. He knows the woods and 
streams and mountains, and their savage inhabi- 
tants, as well as we know all our rich relations, 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 139 

and what they are doing ; and in lonely bear- 
hunts and sable-trappings he has thought out 
and solved most of the problems of life. As he 
stands in his wood-gear, he is as grizzly as an old 
cedar-tree ; and he speaks in a high falsetto 
voice, which would be invaluable to a boatswain 
in a storm at sea. 

We had been talking of all subjects about 
which rational men are interested, — bears, 
panthers, trapping, the habits of trout, the 
tariff, the internal revenue (to wit, the injustice 
of laying such a tax on tobacco, and none on 
dogs : " There ain't no dog in the C/nited States," 
says the guide, at the top of his voice, " that 
earns his living"), the Adventists, the Gorner 
Grat, Horace Greeley, religion, the propagation 
of seeds in the wilderness (as, for instance, where 
were the seeds lying for ages that spring up into 
certain plants and flowers as soon as a spot is 
cleared anywhere in the most remote forest ; 



I4O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

and why does a growth of oak-trees always 
come up after a growth of pine has been re- 
moved ?) — in short, we had pretty nearly 
reached a solution of many mysteries, when 
Phelps suddenly exclaimed with uncommon 
energy, — 

" Wall, there 's one thing that beats me ! " 

" What 's that ? " we asked with undisguised 
curiosity. 

" That 's ' pusley ' ! " he replied, in the tone of 
a man who has come to one door in life which is 
hopelessly shut, and from which he retires in 
despair. 

" Where it comes from I don't know, nor what 
to do with it. It's in my garden ; and I can't 
get rid of it. It beats me." 

About " pusley " the guide had no theory and 
no hope. A feeling of awe came over me, as we 
lay there at midnight, hushed by the sound of 
the stream and the rising wind in the spruce- 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. I4I 

tops. Then man can go nowhere that "pusley" 
will not attend him. Though he camp on the 
Upper Au Sable, or penetrate the forest where 
rolls the Allegash, and hears no sound save his 
own allegations, he will not escape it. It has 
entered the happy valley of Keene, although 
there is yet no church there, and only a feeble 
school part of the year. Sin travels faster than 
they that ride in chariots. I take my hoe, and 
begin ; but I feel that I am warring against 
something whose roots take hold on H. 

By the time a man gets to be eighty he learns 
that he is compassed by limitations, and that 
there has been a natural boundary set to his 
individual powers. As he goes on in life, he 
begins to doubt his ability to destroy all evil 
and to reform all abuses, and to suspect that 
there will be much left to do after he has done. 
I stepped into my garden in the spring, not 
doubting that I should be easily master of the 



142 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

weeds. I have simply learned that an institution 
which is at least six thousand years old, and I 
believe six millions, is not to be put down in 
one season. 

I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody 
cares to know it. I planted them in what are 
called " Early Rose," — the rows a little less 
than three feet apart ; but the vines came to 
an early close in the drought. Digging pota- 
toes is a pleasant, soothing occupation, but not 
poetical. It is good for the mind, unless they 
are too small (as many of mine are), when it 
begets a want of gratitude to the bountiful 
earth. What small potatoes we all are, com- 
pared with what we might be ! We don't 
plough deep enough, any of us, for one thing. 
I shall put in the plough next year, and give 
the tubers room enough. I think they felt the 
lack of it this year: many of them seemed 
ashamed to come out so small. There is great 



WHAT 1 KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 



H3 



pleasure in turning out the brown-jacketed fel- 
lows into the sunshine of a royal September 
day, and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly 
strewn on the warm soil. Life has few such 
moments. But then they must be picked up. 
The picking-up, in this world, is always the un- 
pleasant part of it. 





SIXTEENTH WEEK. 




DO not hold myself bound to answer 
HDL the question, Does gardening pay ? It 
is so difficult to define what is meant 
by paying. There is a popular notion that, 
unless a thing pays, you had better let it alone ; 
and I may say that there is a public opinion that 
will not let a man or woman continue in the 
indulgence of a fancy that does not pay. And 
public opinion is stronger than the legislature, 
and nearly as strong as the ten commandments : 
I therefore yield to popular clamor when I dis- 
cuss the profit of my garden. 

As I look at it, you might as well ask, Does a 
sunset pay ? I know that a sunset is commonly 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 45 

looked on as a cheap entertainment ; but it is 
really one of the most expensive. It is true 
that we can all have front seats, and we do not 
exactly need to dress for it as we do for the 
opera ; but the conditions under which it is to 
be enjoyed are rather dear. Among them I 
should name a good suit of clothes, including 
some trifling ornament, — not including back 
hair for one sex, or the parting of it in the 
middle for the other. I should add also a good 
dinner, well cooked and digestible ; and the cost 
of a fair education, extended, perhaps, through 
generations in which sensibility and love of 
beauty grew. What I mean is, that if a man 
is hungry and naked, and half a savage, or with 
the love of beauty undeveloped in him, a sunset 
is thrown away on him : so that it appears that 
the conditions of the enjoyment of a sunset are 
as costly as anything in our civilization. 

Of course there is no such thing as absolute 



I46 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

value in this world. You can only estimate 
what a thing is worth to you. Does gardening 
in a city pay ? You might as well ask if it pays 
to keep hens, or a trotting-horse, or to wear a 
gold ring, or to keep your lawn cut, or your hair 
cut. It is as you like it. ' In a certain sense, it 
is a sort of profanation to consider if my garden 
pays, or to set a money-value upon my delight in 
it. I fear that you could not put it in money. 
Job had the right idea in his mind when he 
asked, " Is there any taste in the white of an 
egg ? " Suppose there is not ! What ! shall I 
set a price upon the tender asparagus or the 
crisp lettuce, which made the sweet spring a 
reality ? Shall I turn into merchandise the red 
strawberry, the pale green pea, the high-flavored 
raspberry, the sanguinary beet, that love-plant 
the tomato, and the corn which did not waste its 
sweetness on the desert air, but, after flowing in 
a sweet rill through all our summer life, mingled 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. I47 

at last with the engaging bean in a pool of suc- 
cotash ? Shall I compute in figures what daily 
freshness and health and delight the garden 
yields, let alone the large crop of anticipation 
I gathered as soon as the first seeds got above 
ground ? I appeal to any gardening man of 
sound mind, if that which pays him best in 
gardening is not that which he cannot show in 
his trial-balance. ■ Yet I yield to public opinion, 
when I proceed to make such a balance ; and I 
do it with the utmost confidence in figures. 

I select as a representative vegetable, in order 
to estimate the cost of gardening, the potato. 
In my statement, I shall not include the interest 
on the value of the land. I throw in the land, 
because it would otherwise have stood idle : the 
thing generally raised on city land is taxes. I 
therefore make the following statement of the 
cost and income of my potato-crop, a part of 
it estimated in connection with other garden 



I48 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

labor. I have tried to make it so as to satisfy 
the income-tax collector : — 

Dr. 

Ploughing $ 0.50 

Seed 1.50 

Manure 8.00 

Assistance in planting and digging, 3 days 6.75 

Labor of self in planting, hoeing, digging, 

picking up, 5 days at 17 cents 85 

Total cost $ 17.60 

Cr. 

Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes, at 

2 cents - % 50.00 

Small potatoes given to neighbor's pig .50 

Total return 50-5° 

Balance, profit in cellar 32.90 

Some of these items need explanation. I 
have charged nothing for my own time waiting 
for the potatoes to grow. My time in hoeing, 
fighting weeds, &c, is put in at five days : it 
may have been a little more. Nor have I put 
in anything for cooling drinks while hoeing. 
1 leave this out from principle, because I al- 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 49 

ways recommend water to others. I had some 
difficulty in fixing the rate of my own wages. 
It was the first time that I had an opportunity 
of paying what I thought labor was worth ; and 
I determined to make a good thing of it for once. 
I figured it right down to European prices, — 
seventeen cents a day for unskilled labor. Of 
course, I boarded myself. I ought to say that I 
fixed the wages after the work was done, or I 
might have been tempted to do as some masons 
did who worked for me at four dollars a day. 
They lay in the shade and slept the sleep of 
honest toil full half the time, — at least all the 
time I was away. I have reason to believe that 
when the wages of mechanics are raised to eight 
and ten dollars a day, the workmen will not come 
at all : they will merely send their cards. 

I do not see any possible fault in the above 
figures. I ought to say that I deferred putting 
a value on the potatoes until I had footed up the 



150 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

debit column. This is always the safest way to 
do. I had twenty-five bushels. I roughly esti- 
mated that there are one hundred good ones to 
the bushel. Making my own market price, I 
asked two cents apiece for them. This I should 
have considered dirt cheap last June, when I was 
going down the rows with the hoe. If any one 
thinks that two cents each is high, let him try to 
raise them. 

Nature is " awful smart." I intend to be com- 
plimentary in saying so. She shows it in little 
things. I have mentioned my attempt to put 
in a few modest turnips, near the close of the 
season. I sowed the seeds, by the way, in the 
most liberal manner. Into three or four short 
rows I presume I put enough to sow an acre ; 
and they all came up, — came up as thick as 
grass, as crowded and useless as babies in a 
Chinese village. Of course, they had to be 
thinned out ; that is, pretty much all pulled 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENINGc 1 5 I 

up ; and it took me a long time ; for it takes 
a conscientious man some time to decide which 
are the best and healthiest plants to spare. Af- 
ter all, I spared too many. That is the great 
danger everywhere in this world (it may not be 
in the next) ; things are too thick : we lose all 
in grasping for too much. The Scotch say, that 
no man ought to thin out his own turnips, be- 
cause he will not sacrifice enough to leave room 
for the remainder to grow : h „ should get his 
neighbor, who does not care for the plants, to 
do it. But this is mere talk, and aside from the 
point : if there is anything I desire to avoid in 
these agricultural papers, it is digression. I did 
think that putting in these turnips so late in the 
season, when general activity has ceased, and in 
a remote part of the garden, they would pass 
unnoticed. But Nature never even winks, as I 
can see. The tender blades were scarcely out 
of the ground when she sent a small black fly, 



152 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

which seemed to have been born and held 13 
reserve for this purpose, — to cut the leaves. 
They speedily made lace-work of the whole bed. 
Thus everything appears to have its special ene- 
my, — except, perhaps, p y : nothing ever 

troubles that. 

Did the Concord Grape ever come to more 
luscious perfection than this year ? or yield so 
abundantly ? The golden sunshine has passed 
into them, and distended their purple skins al- 
most to bursting. Such heavy clusters ! such 
bloom ! such sweetness ! such meat and drink 
in their round globes ! What a fine fellow Bac- 
chus would have been, if he had only signed 
the pledge when he was a young man ! I have 
taken off clusters that were as compact and al- 
most as large as the Black Hamburgs. It is 
slow work picking them. I do not see how 
the gatherers for the vintage ever get off enough. 
It takes so long to disentangle the bunches from 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 53 

the leaves and the interlacing vines and the 
supporting tendrils ; and then I like to hold up 
each bunch and look at it in the sunlight, and 
get the fragrance and the bloom of it, and show 
it to Polly, who is making herself useful, as 
taster and companion, at the foot of the ladder, 
before dropping it into the basket. But we have 
other company. The robin, the most knowing 
and greedy bird out of paradise (I trust he will 
always be kept out), has discovered that the 
grape-crop is uncommonly good, and has come 
back, with his whole tribe and family, larger 
than it was in pea-time. He knows the ripest 
bunches as well as anybody, and tries them all. 
If he would take a whole bunch here and there, 
say half the number, and be off with it, I should 
not so much care. But he will not. He pecks 
away at all the bunches, and spoils as many as 
he can. It is time he went south. 

There is no prettier sight, to my eye, than a 
7* 



154 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN 

gardener on a ladder in his grape-arbor, in these 
golden days, selecting the heaviest clusters of 
grapes, and handing them down to one and 
another of a group of neighbors and friends, 
who stand under the shade of the leaves, flecked 
with the sunlight, and cry, "How sweet ! " 
" What nice ones ! " and the like, — remarks 
encouraging to the man on the ladder. It is 
great pleasure to see people eat grapes. 

Moral Truth. — I have no doubt that grapes 
taste best in other peoples' mouths. It is an 
old notion that it is easier to be generous than 
to be stingy. I am convinced that the majority 
of people would be generous from selfish mo- 
tives, if they had the opportunity. 

Philosophical Observation. — Nothing shows 
one who his friends are like prosperity and 
ripe fruit. I had a good friend in the country, 
whom I almost never visited except in cherry- 
time. By your fruits you shall know them. 




' What nice ones ! " — Page 1 54. 




SEVENTEENTH WEEK. 




LIKE to go into the garden these warm 
H§)1 latter days, and muse. To muse is to 
sit in the sun, and not think of any- 
thing. I am not sure but goodness comes out 
of people who bask in the sun, as it does out 
of a sweet apple roasted before the fire./ The 
late September and October sun of this latitude 
is something like the sun of extreme Lower 
Italy : you can stand a good deal of it, and 
apparently soak a winter supply into the sys- 
tem. If one only could take in his winter fuel 
in this way ! The next great discovery will, 
very likely, be the conservation of sunlight. 
In the correlation of forces, I look to see the 



I56 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

day when the superfluous sunshine will be util- 
ized ; as, for instance, that which has burned 
up my celery this year will be converted into 
a force to work the garden. 

This sitting in the sun amid the evidences 
of a ripe year is the easiest part of gardening I 
have experienced. But what a combat has gone 
on here ! What vegetable passions have run the 
whole gamut of ambition, selfishness, greed of 
place, fruition, satiety, and now rest here in the 
truce of exhaustion ! What a battle-field, if one 
may look upon it so ! The corn has lost its am- 
munition, and stacked arms in a slovenly, militia 
sort of style. The ground vines are torn, tram- 
pled, and withered ; and the ungathered cucum- 
bers, worthless melons, and golden squashes lie 
about like the spent bombs and exploded shells 
of a battle-field. So the cannon-balls lay on 
the sandy plain before Fort Fisher after the 
capture. So the great grassy meadow at Mu- 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 57 

nich, any morning durifig the October Fest, 
is strewn with the empty beer-mugs. History 
constantly repeats itself. There is a large crop 
of moral reflections in my garden, which any- 
body is at liberty to gather who passes this 
way 

I have tried to get in anything that offered 
temptation to sin. There would be no thieves if 
there was nothing to steal ; and I suppose, in the 
thieves' catechism, the provider is as bad as the 
thief; and, probably, I am to blame for leaving 
out a few winter-pears, which some predatory 
boy carried off on Sunday. At first I was 
angry, and said I should like to have caught 
the urchin in the act; but, on second thought, 
I was glad I did not. The interview could not 
have been pleasant. I should n't have known 
what to do with him. The chances are, that 
he would have escaped away with his pockets 
full, and jibed at me from a safe distance. And, 



158 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

if I had got my hands on him, I should have 
been still more embarrassed. If I had flogged 
him, he would have got over it a good deal 
sooner than I should. That sort of boy does 
not mind castigation any more than he does 
tearing his trousers in the briers. If I had 
treated him with kindness, and conciliated him 
with grapes, showing him the enormity of his 
offence, I suppose he would have come the 
next night, and taken the remainder of the 
grapes. The truth is, that the public morality 
is lax on the subject of fruit. If anybody puts 
arsenic or gunpowder into his watermelons, he 
is universally denounced as a stingy old mur- 
derer by the community. A great many people 
regard growing fruit as lawful prey, who would 
not think of breaking into your cellar to take 
it. I found a man once in my raspberry-bushes, 
early in the season, when we were waiting for 
a dishful to ripen. Upon inquiring what he 




" He said he was only eating some. 11 — Page 159. 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 59 

was about, he said he was only eating some ; 
and the operation seemed to be so natural and 
simple, that I disliked to disturb him. And I 
am not very sure that one has a right to the 
whole of an abundant crop of fruit until he has 
gathered it. At least, in a city garden, one 
might as well conform his theory to the prac- 
tice of the community. 

As for children (and it sometimes looks as if 
the chief products of my garden were small boys 
and hens), it is admitted that they are barba- 
rians. There is no exception among them to 
this condition of barbarism. This is not to say 
that they are not attractive ; for they have the 
virtues as well as the vices of a primitive people. 
It is held by some naturalists that the child 
is only a zoophyte, with a stomach, and feelers 
radiating from it in search of something to fill 
it. It is true that a child is always hungry all 
over : but he is also curious all over ; and his 



l6o MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

curiosity is excited about as early as his hunger. 
He immediately begins to put out his moral 
feelers into the unknown and the infinite to 
discover what sort of an existence this is into 
which he has come. His imagination is quite 
as hungry as his stomach. And again and 
again it is stronger than his other appetites. 
You can easily engage his imagination in a 
story which will make him forget his dinner. 
He is credulous and superstitious, and open to 
all wonder. In this, he is exactly like the sav- 
age races. Both gorge themselves on the mar- 
vellous ; and all the unknown is marvellous to 
them. I know the general impression is that 
children must be governed through their stom- 
achs. I think they can be controlled quite as 
well through their curiosity ; that being the 
more craving and imperious of the two. I 
have seen children follow about a person who 
told them stories, and interested them with his 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. l6l 

charming talk, as greedily as if his pockets had 
been full of bon-bons. 

Perhaps this fact has no practical relation to 
gardening ; but it occurs to me that, if I should 
paper the outside of my high board fence with 
the leaves of " The Arabian Nights," it would 
afford me a good deal of protection, — more, in 
fact, than spikes in the top, which tear trousers 
and encourage profanity, but do not save much 
fruit. A spiked fence is a challenge to any 
boy of spirit. But if the fence were papered 
with fairy-tales, would he not stop to read them 
until it was too late for him to climb into the 
garden ? I don't know. Human nature is vi- 
cious. The boy might regard the picture of the 
garden of the Hesperides only as an advertise- 
ment of what was over the fence. I begin to 
find that the problem of raising fruit is nothing 
to that of getting it after it has matured. So 
long as the law, just in many respects, is in 



102 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

force against shooting birds and small boys, 
the gardener may sow in tears and reap in 
vain. 

The power of a boy is, to me, something 
fearful. Consider what he can do. You buy 
and set out a choice pear-tree ; you enrich the 
earth for it ; you train and trim it, and van- 
quish the borer, and watch its . slow growth. 
At length it rewards your care by producing 
two or three pears, which you cut up and divide 
in the family, declaring the flavor of the bit 
you eat to be something extraordinary. The 
next year, the little tree blossoms full, and sets 
well ; and in the autumn has on its slender, 
drooping limbs half a bushel of fruit, daily 
growing more delicious in the sun. You show 
it to your friends, reading to them the French 
name, which you can never remember, on the 
label ; and you take an honest pride in the 
successful fruit of long care. That night youi 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 163 

pears shall be required of you by a boy ! Along 
comes an irresponsible urchin, who has not been 
growing much longer than the tree, with not 
twenty-five cents' worth of clothing on him, 
and in five minutes takes off every pear, and 
retires into safe obscurity. In five minutes 
the remorseless boy has undone your work of 
years, and with the easy nonchalance, I doubt 
not, of any agent of fate, in whose path nothing 
is sacred or safe. 

And it is not of much consequence. The boy 
goes on his way, — to Congress, or to State 
Prison : in either place he will be accused of 
stealing, perhaps wrongfully. You learn, in 
time, that it is better to have had pears and 
lost them than not to have had pears at all. 
You come to know that the least (and rarest) 
part of the pleasure of raising fruit is the vulgar 
eating it. You recall your delight in conversing 
with the nurseryman and looking at his illus- 



164 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

trated catalogues, where all the pears are drawn 
perfect in form, and of extra size, and at that 
exact moment between ripenesss and decay 
which it is so impossible to hit in practice. 
Fruit cannot be raised on this earth to taste as 
you imagine those pears would taste. For years 
you have this pleasure, unalloyed by any disen- 
chanting reality. How you watch the tender 
twigs in spring, and the freshly forming bark, 
hovering about the healthy growing tree with 
your pruning-knife many a sunny morning ! 
That is happiness. Then, if you know it, you 
are drinking the very wine of life ; and when 
the sweet juices of the earth mount the limbs, 
and flow down the tender stem, ripening and 
reddening the pendent fruit, you feel that you 
somehow stand at the source of things, and have 
no unimportant share in the processes of Nature. 
Enter at this moment boy the destroyer, whose 
office is that of preserver as well ; for, though 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 



165 



he removes the fruit from your sight, it remains 
in your memory immortally ripe and desirable. 
The gardener needs all these consolations of a 
high philosophy. 





EIGHTEENTH WEEK. 




EGRETS are idle ; yet history is one 
long regret. Everything might have 
turned out so differently ! If Ravail- 
lac had not been imprisoned for debt, he would 
not have stabbed Henry of Navarre, If Wil- 
liam of Orange had escaped assassination by 
Philip's emissaries ; if France had followed the 
French Calvin, and embraced Protestant Cal- 
vinism, as it came very near doing towards the 
end of the sixteenth century ; if the Continen- 
tal ammunition had not given out at Bunker's 
Hill ; if Blucher had not " come up " at Water- 
loo, — the lesson is, that things do not come up 
unless they are planted. When you go behind 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 67 

the historical scenery, you find there is a rope 
and pulley to effect every transformation which 
has astonished you. It was the rascality of a 
minister and a contractor five years before that 
lost the battle ; and the cause of the defeat was 
worthless ammunition. I should like to know 
how many wars have been caused by fits of 
indigestion, and how many more dynasties have 
been upset by the love of woman than by the 
hate of man. It is only because we are ill in- 
formed that anything surprises us ; and we are 
disappointed because we expect that for which 
we have not provided. 

I had too vague expectations of what my 
garden would do of itself. A garden ought to 
produce one everything, — just as a business 
ought to support a man, and a house ought 
to keep itself. We had a convention lately to 
resolve that the house should keep itself; but 
it won't. There has been a lively time in our 



1 68 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

garden this summer ; but it seems to me there 
is very little to show for it. It has been a ter- 
rible campaign ; but where is the indemnity ? 
Where are all " sass " and Lorraine ? It is 
true that we have lived on the country ; but 
we desire, besides, the fruits of the war. There 
are no onions, for one thing. I am quite 
ashamed to take people into my garden, and 
have them notice the absence of onions. It 
is very marked. In onion is strength ; and a 
garden without it lacks flavor. The onion in 
its satin wrappings is among the most beauti- 
ful of vegetables ; and it is the only one that 
represents the essence of things. It can al- 
most be said to have a soul. You take off coat 
after coat, and the onion is still there ; and, 
when the last one is removed, who dare say 
that the onion itself is destroyed, though you 
can weep over its departed spirit ? If there is 
any one thing on this fallen earth that the angels 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 169 

in heaven weep over more than another, it is the 
onion. 

I know that there is supposed to be a preju- 
dice against the onion ; but I think there is 
rather a cowardice in regard to it. I doubt not 
that all men and women love the onion ; but 
few confess their love. Affection for it is con- 
cealed. Good New-Englanders are as shy of 
owning it as they are of talking about religion. 
Some people have days on which they eat 
onions, — what you might call " retreats,'' or 
their " Thursdays/' The act is in the nature 
of a religious ceremony, an Eleusinian mys- 
tery ; not a breath of it must get abroad. On 
that day they see no company ; they deny the 
kiss of greeting to the dearest friend ; they 
retire within themselves, and hold communion 
with one of the most pungent and penetrating 
manifestations of the moral vegetable world. 
Happy is said to be the family which can cat 



I/O MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

onions together. They are, for the time being, 
separate from the world, and have a harmony of 
aspiration. There is a hint here for the reform- 
ers. Let them become apostles of the onion ; 
let them eat, and preach it to their fellows, and 
circulate tracts of it in the form of seeds. In 
the onion is the hope of universal brotherhood. 
If all men will eat onions at all times, they will 
come into a universal sympathy. Look at Italy. 
I hope I am not mistaken as to the cause of her 
unity. It was the Reds who preached the gospel 
which made it possible. All the Reds of Eu- 
rope, all the sworn devotees of the mystic Mary 
Ann, eat of the common vegetable. Their oaths 
are strong with it. It is the food, also, of the 
common people of Italy. All the social atmos- 
phere of that delicious land is laden with it. 
Its odor is a practical democracy. In the 
churches all are alike : there is one faith, one 
smell. The entrance of Victor Emanuel into 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 171 

Rome is only the pompous proclamation of a 
unity which garlic had already accomplished ; 
and yet we, who boast of our democracy, eat 
onions in secret. 

I now see that I have left out many of the 
most moral elements. Neither onions, parsnips, 
carrots, nor cabbages are here. I have never 
seen a garden in the autumn before, without 
the uncouth cabbage in it; but my garden 
gives the impression of a garden without a 
head. The cabbage is the rose of Holland. I 
admire the force by which it compacts its crisp 
leaves into a solid head. The secret of it would 
be priceless to the world. We should see less 
expansive foreheads with nothing within. Even 
the largest cabbages are not always the best. 
But I mention these things, not from any sym- 
pathy I have with the vegetables named, but to 
show how hard it is to go contrary to the expec- 
tations of society. Society expects every man 



172 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

to have certain things in his garden. Not to 
raise cabbage is as if one had no pew in church. 
Perhaps we shall come some day to free churches 
and free gardens ; when I can show my neighbor 
through my tired garden, at the end of the sea- 
son, when skies are overcast, and brown leaves 
are swirling down, and not mind if he does raise 
his eyebrows when he observes, " Ah ! I see 
you have none of this, and of that." At pres j 
ent we want the moral courage to plant only 
what we need ; to spend only what will bring 
us peace, regardless of what is going on over 
the fence. We are half ruined by conformity ; 
but we should be wholly ruined without it : and 
I presume I shall make a garden next year that 
will be as popular as possible. 

And this brings me to what I see may be a 
crisis in life. I begin to feel the temptation of 
experiment. Agriculture, horticulture, floricul- 
ture, — these are vast fields, into which one may 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 73 

wander away, and never be seen more. It 
seemed to me a very simple thing, this garden- 
ing ; but it opens up astonishingly. It is like 
the infinite possibilities in worsted-work. Polly 
sometimes says to me, " I wish you would call 
at Bobbin's, and match that skein of worsted for 
me when you are in town." Time was I used 
to accept such a commission with alacrity and 
self-confidence. I went to Bobbin's, and asked 
one of his young men, with easy indifference, to 
give me some of that. The young man, who is 
as handsome a young man as ever I looked at, 
and who appears to own the shop, and whose 
suave superciliousness would be worth every- 
thing to a cabinet minister who wanted to 
repel applicants for place, says, " I have n't an 
ounce: I have sent to Paris, and I expect it 
every day. I have a good deal of difficulty in 
getting that shade in my assortment." To think 
that he is in communication with Paris, and 



174 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

perhaps with Persia ! Respect for such a being 
gives place to awe. I go to another shop, hold- 
ing fast to my scarlet clew. There I am shown 
a heap of stuff, with more colors and shades than 
I had supposed existed in all the world. What 
a blaze of distraction ! I have been told to get 
as near the shade as I could ; and so I compare 
and contrast, till the whole thing seems to me 
about of one color. But I can settle my mind 
on nothing. The affair assumes a high degree 
of importance. I am satisfied with nothing but 
perfection. I don't know what may happen if 
the shade is not matched. I go to another shop, 
and another, and another. At last a pretty girl, 
who could make any customer believe that green 
is blue, matches the shade in a minute. I buy 
five cents' worth. That was the order. Women 
are the most economical persons that ever were. 
I have spent two hours in this five-cent business ; 
but who shall say they were wasted, when I take 




* Polly says it is a perfect match." — Page 175. 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 75 

the stuff home, and Polly says it is a perfect 
match, and looks so pleased, and holds it up 
with the work, at arm's length, and turns her 
head one side, and then takes her needle, and 
works it in ? Working in, I can see, my own 
obligingness and amiability with every stitch. 
Five cents is dirt cheap for such a pleasure. 

The things I may do in my garden multiply 
on my vision. How fascinating have the cata- 
logues of the nurserymen become ! Can I raise 
all those beautiful varieties, each one of which 
is preferable to the other? Shall I try all the 
kinds of grapes, and all the sorts of pears ? I 
have already fifteen varieties of strawberries 
(vines) ; and I have no idea that I have hit 
the right one. Must I subscribe to all the mag- 
azines and weekly papers which offer premiums 
of the best vines ? O that all the strawberries 
were rolled into one, that I could enclose all 
its lusciousness in one bite J O for the good old 



176 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

days when a strawberry was a strawberry, and 
there was no perplexity about it ! There are 
more berries now than churches ; and no one 
knows what to believe. I have seen gardens 
which were all experiment, given over to every 
new thing, and which produced little or nothing 
to the owners, except the pleasure of expectation. 
People grow pear-trees at great expense of time 
and money, which never yield them more than 
four pears to the tree. The fashions of ladies' 
bonnets are nothing to the fashions of nursery- 
men. He who attempts to follow them has a 
business for life ; but his life may be short- 
If I enter upon this wide field of horticultural 
experiment, I shall leave peace behind ; and I 
may expect the ground to open, and swallow me 
and all my fortune. May Heaven keep me to 
the old roots and herbs of my forefathers ! 
Perhaps in the world of modern reforms this 
is not possible ; but I intend now to cultivate 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 



177 



only the standard things, and learn to talk 
knowingly of the rest. Of course, one must 
keep up a reputation. I have seen people 
greatly enjoy themselves, and elevate themselves 
in their own esteem, in a wise and critical talk 
about all the choice wines, while they were 
sipping a decoction, the original cost of which 
bore no relation to the price of grapes. 




NINETEENTH WEEK. 




>HE closing scenes are not necessarily 
funereal. A garden should be got 
ready for winter as well as for sum- 
mer. When one goes into winter-quarters he 
wants everything neat and trig. Expecting 
high winds, we bring everything into close 
reef. Some men there are who never shave 
(if they are so absurd as ever to shave), ex- 
cept when they go abroad, and who do not 
take care to wear polished boots in the bosoms 
of their families. I like a man who shaves 
(next to one who does n't shave) to satisfy his 
own conscience, and not for display, and who 
dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere. 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 79 

Such a man will be likely to put his garden in 
complete order before the snow comes, so that 
its last days shall not present a scene of melan- 
choly ruin and decay. 

I confess that, after such an exhausting cam- 
paign, I felt a great temptation to retire, and 
call it a drawn engagement. But better coun- 
sels prevailed. I determined that the weeds 
should not sleep on the field of battle. I 
routed them out, and levelled their works. I 
am master of the situation. If I have made a 
desert, I at least have peace ; but it is not quite 
a desert. The strawberries, the raspberries, the 
celery, the turnips, wave green above the clean 
earth, with no enemy in sight. In these golden 
October days no work is more fascinating than 
this getting ready for spring. The sun is no 
longer a burning enemy, but a friend, illuminat- 
ing all the open space, and warming the mellow 
soil. And the pruning and clearing-away of 



l80 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

rubbish, and the fertilizing, go on with some- 
thing of the hilarity of a wake, rather than 
the despondency of other funerals. When the 
wind begins to come out of the northwest of 
set purpose, and to sweep the ground with low 
and searching fierceness, very different from the 
roystering, jolly bluster of early fall, I have put 
the strawberries under their coverlet of leaves, 
pruned the grapevines and laid them under the 
soil, tied up the tender plants, given the fruit- 
trees a good, solid meal about the roots ; and 
so I turn away, writing Resurgam on the gate- 
post. And Calvin, aware that the summer is 
past and the harvest is ended, and that a mouse 
in the kitchen is worth two birds gone south, 
scampers away to the house with his tail in the 
air. 

And yet I am not perfectly at rest in my mind. 
I know that this is only a truce until the parties 
recover their exhausted energies. All wintei 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. l8l 

long the forces of chemistry will be mustering 
under ground, repairing the losses, calling up 
the reserves, getting new strength from my sur- 
face-fertilizing bounty, and making ready for 
the spring campaign. They will open it before 
I am ready : while the snow is scarcely melted, 
and the ground is not passable, they will begin 
to move on my works ; and the fight will com- 
mence. Yet how deceitfully it will open to the 
music of birds and the soft enchantment of the 
spring mornings ! I shall even be permitted to 
win a few skirmishes : the secret forces will 
even wait for me to plant and sow, and show 
my full hand, before they come on in heavy 
and determined assault. There are already 
signs of an internecine fight with the devil- 
grass, which has intrenched itself in a con- 
siderable portion of my garden-patch. It con- 
tests the ground inch by inch ; and digging it 
out is very much such labor as eating a pi< 



1 82 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

of choke-cherry pie with the stones all in* It 
is work, too, that I know by experience I snail 
have to do alone. Every man must eradicate 
his own devil-grass. The neighbors who have 
leisure to help you in grape-picking time are 
all busy when devil-grass is most aggressive. 
My neighbors' visits are well timed : it is only 
their hens which have all seasons for their own. 
I am told that abundant and rank weeds are 
signs of a rich soil ; but I have noticed that a 
thin, poor soil grows little but weeds. I am 
inclined to think that the substratum is the 
same, and that the only choice in this world is 
what kind of weeds you will have. I am not 
much attracted by the gaunt, flavorless mullein, 
and the wiry thistle of upland country pastures, 
where the grass is always gray, as if the world 
were already weary and sick of life. The awk- 
ward, uncouth wickedness of remote country- 
places, where culture has died out after the 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 83 

first crop, is about as disagreeable as the ranker 
and richer vice of city life, forced by artificial 
heat and the juices of an overfed civilization. 
There is no doubt that, on the whole, the rich 
soil is the best : the fruit of it has body and 
flavor. To what affluence does a woman (to 
take an instance, thank Heaven, which is com- 
mon) grow, with favoring circumstances, under 
the stimulus of the richest social and intellec- 
tual influences ! I am aware that there has 
been a good deal said in poetry about the 
fringed gentian , and the harebell of rocky dis- 
tricts and waysides, and I know that it is pos- 
sible for maidens to bloom in very slight soil 
into a wild-wood grace and beauty ; yet, the 
world through, they lack that wealth of charms, 
that tropic affluence of both person and mind, 
which higher and more stimulating culture 
brings, — the passion as well as the soul glowing 
in the Cloth-of-GoJd rose. Neither persons noi 



1 84 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

plants are ever fully themselves . until they are 
cultivated to their highest. I, for one, have no 
fear that society will be too much enriched. 
The only question is about keeping down the 
weeds ; and I have learned by experience, that 
we need new sorts of hoes, and more disposi- 
tion to use them. 

Moral Deduction. — The difference between 
soil and society is evident. We bury decay in 
the earth ; we plant in it the perishing ; we feed 
it with offensive refuse : but nothing grows out 
of it that is not clean ; it gives us back life and 
beauty for our rubbish. Society returns us what 
we give it. 

Pretending to reflect upon these things, but in 
reality watching the blue-jays, who are pecking 
at the purple berries of the woodbine on the 
south gable, I approach the house. Polly is 
picking up chestnuts on the sward, regardless 
of the high wind which rattles them about her 



WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 1 85 

head and upon the glass roof of her winter-gar- 
den. The garden, I see, is filled with thrifty- 
plants, which will make it always summer there. 
The callas about the fountain will be in flower 
by Christmas : the plant appears to keep that 
holiday in her secret heart all summer. I close 
the outer windows as we go along, and congrat- 
ulate myself that we are ready for winter. 
For the winter-garden I have no responsibility : 
Polly has entire charge of it. I am only re- 
quired to keep it heated, and not too hot either ; 
to smoke it often for the death of the bugs ; to 
water it once a day ; to move this and that into 
the sun and out of the sun pretty constantly : 
but she does all the work. We never relinquish 
that theory. 

As we pass around the house, I discover a boy 
in the ravine filling a bag with chestnuts and 
hickory-nuts. They are not plenty this year ; 
and I suggest the propriety o r leaving some 



1 86 MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN. 

for us. The boy is a little slow to take the 
idea : but he has apparently found the picking 
poor, and exhausted it ; for, as he turns away 
down the glen, he hails me with, — 

" Mister, I say, can you tell me where I can 
find some walnuts ? " 

The coolness of this world grows upon me. 
It is time to go in and light a wood-fire on the 
hearth. 




CALVIN: 

A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 




Note. The following brief Memoir of one of the charac- 
ters in this book is added by his friend, in the hope that the 
record of an exemplary life in an humble sphere may be of 
some service to the world. 

Hartford, January, 1880. 




CALVIN: 

A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 

ALVIN is dead. His life, long to him, 
but short for the rest of us, was not 
marked by startling adventures, but 
his character was so uncommon and his qualities 
were so worthy of imitation, that I have been 
asked by those who personally knew him to set 
down my recollections of his career. 

His origin and ancestry were shrouded in 
mystery ; even his age was a matter of pure 
conjecture. Although he was of the Maltese 
race, I have reason to suppose that he was 
American by birth as he certainly was in sym- 
pathy. Calvin was given to me eight years ago 
by Mrs. Stowe, but she knew nothing of his age 



I9O CALVIN : 

or origin. He walked into her house one day 
out of the great unknown and became at once 
at home, as if he had been always a friend of 
the family. He appeared to have artistic and 
literary tastes, and it was as if he had inquired 
at the door if that was the residence of the 
author of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," and, upon be- 
ing assured that it was, had decided to dwell 
there. This is, of course, fanciful, for his ante- 
cedents were wholly unknown, but in his time 
he could hardly have been in any household 
where he would hot have heard " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin" talked about. When he came to Mrs. 
Stowe, he was as large as he ever was, and 
apparently as old as he ever became. Yet there 
was in him no appearance of age ; he was in 
the happy maturity of all his powers, and you 
would rather have said that in that maturity he 
had found the secret of perpetual youth. And 
it was as difficult to believe that he would ever 



A STUDY OF CHARACTER. I9I 

be aged as it was to imagine that he had ever 
been in immature youth. There was in him a 
mysterious perpetuity. 

After some years, when Mrs. Stowe made her 
winter home in Florida, Calvin came to live with 
us. From the first moment, he fell into the 
ways of the house and assumed a recognized 
position in the family, — I say recognized, be- 
cause after he became known he was always 
inquired for by visitors, and in the letters to the 
other members of the family he always received 
a message. Although the least obtrusive of be- 
ings, his individuality always made itself felt. 

His personal appearance had much to do with 
this, for he was of royal mould, and had an air 
of high breeding. He was large, but he had 
nothing of the fat grossness of the celebrated 
Angora family; though powerful, he was exqui- 
sitely proportioned, and as graceful in every 
movement as a young leopard. When he stood 



192 CALVIN : 

up to open a door — he opened all the doors with 
old-fashioned latches — he was portentously "tall, 
and when stretched on the rug before the fire 
he seemed too long for this world — as indeed 
he was. His coat was the finest and softest I 
have ever seen, a shade of quiet Maltese ; and 
from his throat downward, underneath, to the 
white tips of his feet, he wore the whitest and 
most delicate ermine ; and no person was ever 
more fastidiously neat. In his finely formed 
head you saw something of his aristocratic char- 
acter ; the ears were small and cleanly cut, there 
was a tinge of pink in the nostrils, his face was 
handsome, and the expression of his countenance 
exceedingly intelligent — I should call it even a 
sweet expression if the term were not incon- 
sistent with his look of alertness and sagacity. 

It is difficult to convey a just idea of his gay- 
ety in connection with his dignity and gravity 
which his name expressed. As we know noth- 



A STUDY OF CHARACTER. I93 

ing of his family, of course it will be understood 
that Calvin was his Christian name. He had 
times of relaxation into utter playfulness, delight- 
ing in a ball of yarn, catching sportively at stray 
ribbons when his mistress was at her toilet, and 
pursuing his own tail, with hilarity, for lack of 
anything better. He could amuse himself by 
the hour, and he did not care for children ; per- 
haps something in his past was present to his 
memory. He had absolutely no bad habits, and 
his disposition was perfect. I never saw him 
exactly angry, though I have seen his tail grow 
to an enormous size when a strange cat ap- 
peared upon his lawn. He disliked cats, evi- 
dently regarding them as feline and treacherous, 
and he had no association with them. Occa- 
sionally there would be heard a night concert 
in the shrubbery Calvin would ask to have 
the door opened, and then you would hear a 
rush and a "pestzt," and the concert would ex- 

9 M 



194 calvin: 

plode, and Calvin would quietly come in and 
resume his seat on the hearth. There was no 
trace of anger in his manner, but he would n't 
have any of that about the house. He had the 
rare virtue of magnanimity. Although he had 
fixed notions about his own rights, and extraor- 
dinary persistency in getting them, he never 
showed temper at a repulse ; he simply and 
firmly persisted till he had what he wanted. 
His diet was one point ; his idea was that of 
the scholars about dictionaries, — to "get the 
best." He knew as well as any one what was 
in the house, and would refuse beef if turkey 
was to be had ; and if there were oysters, he 
would wait over the turkey to see if the oysters 
would not be forthcoming. And yet he was not 
a gross gourmand ; he would eat bread if he saw 
me eating it, and thought he was not being im- 
posed on. His habits of feeding, also, were 
refined ; he never used a knife, and he would 



A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 195 

put up his hand and draw the fork down to his 
mouth as gracefully as a grown person. Unless 
necessity compelled, he would not eat in the 
kitchen, but insisted upon his meals in the 
dining-room, and would wait patiently, unless a 
stranger were present ; and then he was sure to 
importune the visitor, hoping that the latter was 
ignorant of the rule of the house, and would give 
him something. They used to say that he pre- 
ferred as his table-cloth on the floor a certain 
well-known church journal ; but this was said by 
an Episcopalian. So far as I know, he had no 
religious prejudices, except that he did not like 
the association with Romanists. He tolerated 
the servants, because they belonged to the house, 
and would sometimes linger by the kitchen stove ; 
but the moment visitors came in he arose, opened 
the door, and marched into the drawing-room. 
Yet he enjoyed the company of his equals, and 
never withdrew, no matter how many callers — 



I96 CALVIN : 

whom he recognized as of his society — might 
come into the drawing-room. Calvin was fond 
of company, but he wanted to choose it ; and I 
have no doubt that his was an aristocratic fas- 
tidiousness rather than one of faith. It is so 
with most people. 

The intelligence of Calvin was something phe- 
nomenal, in his rank of life. He established a 
method of communicating his wants, and even 
some of his sentiments ; and he could help him- 
self in many things. There was a furnace reg- 
ister in a retired room, where he used to go 
when he wished to be alone, that he always 
opened when he desired more heat ; but never 
shut it, any more than he shut the door after 
himself. He could do almost everything but 
speak ; and you would declare sometimes that 
you could see a pathetic longing to do that in 
his intelligent face. I have no desire to over- 
draw his qualities, but if there was one thing in 



A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 1 97 

him more noticeable than another, it was his fond- 
ness for nature. He could content himself for 
hours at a low window, looking into the ravine 
and at the great trees, noting the smallest stir 
there; he delighted, above all things, to accom- 
pany me walking about the garden, hearing the 
birds, getting the smell of the fresh earth, and 
rejoicing in the sunshine. He followed me and 
gambolled like a dog, rolling over on the turf 
and exhibiting his delight in a hundred ways. 
If I worked, he sat and watched me, or looked 
off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the 
twitter in the cherry-trees. When it stormed, he 
was sure to sit at the window, keenly watching 
the rain or the snow, glancing up and down at 
its falling; and a winter tempest always de- 
lighted him. I think he was genuinely fond of 
birds, but, so far as I know, he usually confined 
himself to one a day ; he never killed, as some 
sportsmen do, for the sake of killing, but only as 



198 calvin : 

civilized people do, — from necessity. He was 
intimate with the flying-squirrels who dwell in 
the chestnut-trees, — too intimate, for almost 
every day in the summer he would bring in one, 
until he nearly discouraged them. He was, in- 
deed, a superb hunter, and would have been a 
devastating one, if his bump of destructiveness 
had not been offset by a bump of moderation. 
There was very little of the brutality of the 
lower animals about him ; I don't think he en- 
joyed rats for themselves, but he knew his busi- 
ness, and for the first few months of his residence 
with us he waged an awful campaign against the 
horde, and after that his simple presence was 
sufficient to deter them from coming on the 
premises. Mice amused him, but he usually con- 
sidered them too small game to be taken seri- 
ously ; I have seen him play for an hour with a 
mouse, and then let him go with a royal con- 
descension. In this whole matter of "getting a 



A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 1 99 

living," Calvin was a great contrast to the ra- 
pacity of the age in which he lived. 

I hesitate a little to speak of his capacity for 
friendship and the affectionateness of his nature, 
for I know from his own reserve that he would 
not care to have it much talked about. We un- 
derstood each other perfectly, but we never made 
any fuss about it ; when I spoke his name and 
snapped my fingers, he came to me ; when I re- 
turned home at night, he was pretty sure to be 
Waiting for me near the gate, and would rise and 
saunter along the walk, as if his being there were 
purely accidental, — so shy was he commonly of 
showing feeling ; and when I opened the door 
he never rushed in, like a cat, but loitered, and 
lounged, as if he had had no intention of going 
in, but would condescend to. And yet, the fact 
was, he knew dinner was ready, and he was bound 
to be there. He kept the run of dinner-time. It 
happened sometimes, during our absence in the 



200 CALVIN : 

summer, that dinner would be early, and Calvin, 
walking about the grounds, missed it and came 
in late. But he never made a mistake the sec- 
ond day. There was one thing he never did, — 
he never rushed through an open doorway. He 
never forgot his dignity. If he had asked to 
have the door opened, and was eager to go out, 
he always went deliberately ; I can see him now, 
standing on the sill, looking about at the sky as 
if he was thinking whether it were worth while 
to take an umbrella, until he was near having his 
tail shut in. 

His friendship was rather constant than de- 
monstrative. When we returned from an absence 
of nearly two years, Calvin welcomed us with 
evident pleasure, but showed his satisfaction 
rather by tranquil happiness than by fuming 
about. He had the faculty of making us glad 
to get home. It was his constancy that was 
so attractive. He liked companionship, but he 



A STUDY OF CHARACTER, 201 

would n't be petted, or fussed over, or sit in any 
one's lap a moment ; he always extricated him- 
self from such familiarity with dignity and with 
no show of temper. If there was any petting to 
be done, however, he chose to do it. Often he 
would sit looking at me, and then, moved by a 
delicate affection, come and pull at my coat and 
sleeve until he could touch my face with his nose, 
and then go away contented. He had a habit 
of coming to my study in the morning, sitting 
quietly by my side or on the table for hours, 
watching the pen run over the paper, occasion- 
ally swinging his tail round for a blotter, and 
then going to sleep among the papers by the 
inkstand. Or, more rarely, he would watch the 
writing from a perch on my shoulder. Writing 
always interested him, and, until he understood 
it, he wanted to hold the pen. 

He always held himself in a kind of reserve 
with his friend, as if he had said, " Let us respect 



202 CALVIN : 

our personality, and not make a ' mess ' of friend- 
ship." He saw, with Emerson, the risk of de- 
grading it to trivial conveniency. "Why insist 
on rash personal relations with your friend ? " 
" Leave this touching and clawing." Yet I would 
not give an unfair notion of his aloofness, his 
fine sense of the sacredness of the me and the 
not-me. And, at the risk of not being believed, 
I will relate an incident, which was often re- 
peated. Calvin had the practice of passing a 
portion of the night in the contemplation of its 
beauties, and would come into our chamber over 
the roof of the conservatory through the open 
window, summer and winter, and go to sleep on 
the foot of my bed. He would do this always 
exactly in this way ; he never was content to 
stay in the chamber if we compelled him to go 
upstairs and through the door. He had the ob- 
stinacy of General Grant. But this is by the 
way. In the morning, he performed his toilet 



A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 203 

and went down to breakfast with the rest of the 
family. Now, when the mistress was absent 
from home, and at no other time, Calvin would 
come in the morning, when the bell rang, to the 
head of the bed, put up his feet and look into 
my face, follow me about when I rose, " assist " 
at the dressing, and in many purring ways show 
his fondness, as if he had plainly said, " I know 
that she has gone away, but I am here/' Such 
was Calvin in rare moments. 

He had his limitations. Whatever passion he 
had for nature, he had no conception of art. 
There was sent to him once a fine and very 
expressive cat's head in bronze, by Fremiet. I 
placed it on the floor. He regarded it intently, 
approached it cautiously and crouchingly, touched 
it with his nose, perceived the fraud, turned away 
abruptly, and never would notice it afterward. 
On the whole, his life was not only a successful 
one, but a happy one. He never had but one 



204 CALVIN : 

fear, so far as I know : he had a mortal and a 
reasonable terror of plumbers. He would never 
stay in the house when they were here. No 
coaxing could quiet him. Of course he did n't 
share our fear about their charges, but he must 
have had some dreadful experience with them 
in that portion of his life which is unknown to 
us. A plumber was to him the devil, and I have 
no doubt that, in his scheme, plumbers were fore- 
ordained to do him mischief. 

In speaking of his worth, it has never occurred 
to me to estimate Calvin by the worldly stand- 
ard. I know that it is customary now, when 
any one dies, to ask how much he was worth, 
and that no obituary in the newspapers is con- 
sidered complete without such an estimate. The 
plumbers in our house were one day overheard 
to say that, "They say that she says that he says 
that he would n't take a hundred dollars for him." 
It is unnecessary to say that I never made such 



A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 205 

a remark, and that, so far as Calvin was con- 
cerned, there was no purchase in money. 

As I look back upon it, Calvin's life seems to 
me a fortunate one, for it was natural and un- 
forced. He ate when he was hungry, slept when 
he was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very 
tips of his toes and the end of his expressive and 
slow-moving tail. / He delighted to roam about 
the garden, and stroll among the trees, and to 
lie on the green grass and luxuriate in all the 
sweet influences of summer. You could never 
accuse him of idleness, and yet he knew the 
secret of repose. / The poet who wrote so pret- 
tily of him that his little life was rounded with 
a sleep, understated his felicity ; it was rounded 
with a good many. His conscience never seemed 
to interfere with his slumbers. In fact, he had 
good habits and a contented mind. I can see 
him now walk in at the study door, sit down by 
my chair, bring his tail artistically about his feet, 



206 CALVIN : 

and look up at me with unspeakable happiness 
in his handsome face. I often thought that he 
felt the dumb limitation which denied him the 
power of language. But since he was denied 
speech, he scorned the inarticulate mouthings 
of the lower animals. The vulgar mewing and 
yowling of the cat species was beneath him ; he 
sometimes uttered a sort of articulate and well- 
bred ejaculation, when he wished to call atten- 
tion to something that he considered remarkable, 
or to some want of his, but he never went whin- 
ing about. He would sit for hours at a closed 
window, when he desired to enter, without a 
murmur, and when it was opened he never ad- 
mitted that he had been impatient by " bolting " 
in. Though speech he had not, and the unpleas- 
ant kind of utterance given to his race he would 
not use, he had a mighty power of purr to ex* 
press his measureless content with congenial 
society. There was in him a musical organ with 



A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 207 

stops of varied power and expression, upon which 
I have no doubt he could have performed Scar- 
latti's celebrated cat's-fugue. 

Whether Calvin died of old age, or was car- 
ried off by one of the diseases incident to youth, 
it is impossible to say; for his departure was as 
quiet as his advent was mysterious. I only know 
that he appeared to us in this world in his per- 
fect stature and beauty, and that after a time, 
like Lohengrin, he withdrew. In his illness 
there was nothing more to be regretted than 
in all his blameless life. I suppose there never 
was an illness that had more of dignity and 
sweetness and resignation in it. It came on 
gradually, in a kind of listlessness and want of 
appetite. An alarming symptom was his pref- 
erence for the warmth of a furnace-register to 
the lively sparkle of the open wood-fire. What- 
ever pain he suffered, he bore it in silence, and 
seemed only anxious not to obtrude his malady. 



208 CALVIN : 

We tempted him with the delicacies of the sea- 
son, but it soon became impossible for him to 
eat, and for two weeks he ate or drank scarcely 
anything. Sometimes he made an effort to take 
something, but it was evident that he made the 
effort to please us. The neighbors — and I 
am convinced that the advice of neighbors is 
never good for anything — suggested catnip. He 
would n't even smell it. We had the attendance 
of an amateur practitioner of medicine, whose 
real office was the cure of souls, but nothing 
touched his case. He took what was offered, 
but it was with the air of one to whom the time 
for pellets was passed. He sat or lay day after 
day almost motionless, never once making a dis- 
play of those vulgar convulsions or contortions 
of pain which are so disagreeable to society. 
His favorite place was on the brightest spot of 
a Smyrna rug by the conservatory, where the 
sunlight fell and he could hear the fountain play. 



A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 209 

If we went to him and exhibited our interest in 
his condition, he always purred in recognition of 
our sympathy. And when I spoke his name, he 
looked up with an expression that said, "I un- 
derstand it, old fellow, but it 's no use." He was 
to all who came to visit hitn a model of calmness 
and patience in affliction. 

I was absent from home at the last, but heard 
by daily postal-card of his failing condition ; and 
never again saw him alive. One sunny morning, 
he rose from his rug, went into the conservatory 
(he was very thin then), walked around it delib- 
erately, looking at all the plants he knew, and 
then went to the bay-window in the dining-room, 
and stood a long time looking out upon the little 
field, now brown and sere, and toward the gar- 
den, where perhaps the happiest hours of his life 
had been spent. It was a last look. He turned 
and walked away, laid himself down upon the 
bright spot in the rug, and quietly died. 



210 CALVIN: 

It is not too much to say that a little shock 
went through the neighborhood when it was 
known that Calvin was dead, so marked was his 
individuality ; and his friends, one after another, 
came in to see him. There was no sentimental 
nonsense about his obsequies ; it was felt that 
any parade would have been distasteful to him. 
John, who acted as undertaker, prepared a candle- 
box for him, and I believe assumed a profes- 
sional decorum ; but there may have been the 
usual levity underneath, for I heard that he re- 
marked in the kitchen that it was the "dryest 
wake he ever attended.'' Everybody, however, 
felt a fondness for Calvin, and regarded him with 
a certain respect. Between him and Bertha there 
existed a great friendship, and she apprehended 
his nature ; she used to say that sometimes she 
was afraid of him, he looked at her so intelli- 
gently ; she was never certain that he was what 
he appeared to be. 






A STUDY OF CHARACTER. 211 

When I returned, they had laid Calvin on a 
table in an upper chamber by an open window. 
It was February. He reposed in a candle-box, 
lined about the edge with evergreen, and at his 
head stood a little wine-glass with flowers. He 
lay with his head tucked down in his arms, — a 
favorite position of his before the fire, — as if 
asleep in the comfort of his soft and exquisite 
fur. It was the involuntary exclamation of those 
who saw him, " How natural he looks ! " As for 
myself, I said nothing. John buried him under 
the twin hawthorn-trees, — one white and the 
other pink, — in a spot where Calvin was fond 
of lying and listening to the hum of summer 
insects and the twitter of birds. 

Perhaps I have failed to make appear the in- 
dividuality of character that was so evident to 
those who knew him. At any rate, I have set 
down nothing concerning him but the literal 



212 CALVIN. 

truth. He was always a mystery. I did not 
know whence he came; I do not know whither 
he has gone. I would not weave one spray of 
falsehood in the wreath I lay upon his grave. 




